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k A I 


1 m 






M A L C O L M. 


A ROMANCE. 


BY 

GEORGE MACDONALD, 

II 

AUTHOR OF “ROBERT FALCONER,” “WILFRID CUMBERMEDE,” “ALEC FORBES, 

“RANALD BANNERMAN,’* ETC. 


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I > 
f u • 


I > 


I 

PHILADELPHIA 
J.' B. LIPPINCOTT & 
1875. 


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CO. 


fZ3 

■MmM 

cu-py Z 


Bequest 

Albert Adsit demons 
Aug. 24, 1938 
(Not available for exchange) 



CONTENTS 


i 


Chapter Page 

I. Miss Horn 7 

II. Barbara Catanach 8 

III. The Mad Laird 10 

IV. Phemy Mair 12 

V. Lady Florimel 15 

VI. Duncan Macphail 20 

VII. Alexander Graham 26 

VIII. The Swivel 31 

IX. The Salmon-Trout 35 

X. The Funeral 40 

XL The Old Church 44 

XII. The Churchyard 47 

XIII. The Marquis of Lossie. 51 

XIV. Meg Partan’s Lamp 55 

XV. The Slope of the Dune. 58 

XVI. The Storm 62 

XVII. The Accusation 66 

XVIII. The Quarrel 69 

XIX. Duncan’s Pipes 72 

XX. Advances 80 

XXI. Mediation 82 

XXII. Whence AND Whither ? 86 

XXIII. Armageddon 91 

XXIV. The Feast 95 

XXV. The Night Watch loi 

XXVI. Not at Church 105 

XXVII. Lord Gernon no 

XXVIII. A Fisher-Wedding 113 

XXIX. Florimel AND Duncan... 115 

XXX. The Revival 122 

XXXI. Wandering Stars 129 

XXXII. The Skipper’s Chamber 133 

XXXIII. The Library 138 

XXXIV. Milton, and the Bay 

Mare 142 

XXXV. Kirkbyres 144 

XXXVI. The Blow 149 

XXX VII. The Cutter 15 1 

XXXVIII. The Two Dogs 154 

XXXIX. Colons AY Castle 157 


Chapter Page 

XL. The Deil’s Winnock...... 160 

XLI. The Clouded Sapphires... 164 

XLII. Duncan’s Disclosure 170 

XLIII. The Wizard’s Chamber... 174 

XLIV. The Hermit 177 

XLV. Mr. Cairns and the Mar- 
quis 182 

XLVI. The Baillies’ Barn 186 

XLVII. Mrs. Stewart’s Claim.... 191 
XLVIII. The Baillies’ Barn again. 197 

XLIX. Mount Pisgah.... 202 

L. Lizzy Findlay 208 

LI. The Laird’s Burrow 21 1 

LII. Cream or Scum? 214 

LI II. The Schoolmaster’s Cot- 
tage 215 

LIV. One Day ; 219 

LV. The Same Night 224 

LVI. Something Forgotten 226 

LVII. The Laird’s Guest 228 

LVIII. Malcolm and Mrs. Stew- 
art 232 

LIX. An Honest Plot 234 

LX. The Sacrament 240 

LXI. Miss Horn and the Pi- 
per 245 

LXH. The Cuttlefish and the 

Crab 247 

LXHI. Miss Horn and Lord 

Lossie 250 

LXIV. The Laird and his Mo- 
ther 258 

LXV. The Laird’s Vision 259 

LXVI. The Cry from the Cham- 
ber 262 

LXVH. Feet of Woot 266 

LXVIII. Hands of Iron 269 

LXIX. The Marquis and the 

Schoolmaster 272 

LXX. End or Beginning ? 276 


I 


5 





MALCOLM. 

:pa.e.t z. 


CHAPTER I. 

MISS HORN. 

“ IV T A, na ; I hae nae feelin’s, I’m 
thankfu’ to say. I never kent 
ony guid come o’ the7n. They’re a ter- 
rible sicht i’ the gait.” 

“ Naebody ever thoucht o’ layin’ ’t to 
yer chairge, mem.” 

“ ’Deed, I aye had eneuch adu to du 
the thing I had to du, no to say the 
thing ’at naebody wad du but mysel’. 
I hae had nae leisur’ for feelin’s an’ 
that,” insisted Miss Horn. 

But here a heavy step descending the 
stair just outside the room attracted her 
attention, and, checking the flow of her 
speech perforce, with three ungainly 
strides she reached the landing. 

“ Watty Witherspail ! Wattie !” she 
called after the footsteps down the stair. 

“ Yes, mem,” answered a gruff voice 
from below. 

“ Wattie, whan ye fess the bit boxie, 
jist pit a hemmer an’ a puckle nails i’ 
yer pooch to men’ the hen-hoose-door. 
The tane maun be atten’t till as weel’s 
the tither.” 

“ The bit boxie ” was the coffln of her 
third cousin, Griselda Campbell, whose 
body lay in the room on her left hand 
as she called down the stair. Into that 
on her right Miss Horn now re-entered, 
to rejoin Mrs. Mellis, the wife of the 
principal draper in the town, who had 
called ostensibly to condole with her, 
but really to see the corpse. 

“ Aih ! she was taen yoong!” sighed 
the visitor, with long-drawn tones and 
a shake of the head, implying that there- 
in lay ground of complaint, at which 
poor mortals dared but hint. 

“ No that yoong,” returned Miss Horn. 
“She was upo’ the edge o’ aucht an’ 
thirty.” 

“ Weel, she had a sair time o’ ’t.” 

“ No that sair, sae far as I see — an’ 
wha sud ken better .? She’s had a bien 


doon-sittin’ {sheltered quarters), and 
sud hae had as lang’s I was to the fore. 
Na, na ; it was nowther sae young nor 
yet sae sair.” 

“ Aih ! but she was a patient crater 
wi’ a’ flesh,” persisted Mrs. Mellis, as 
if she would not willingly be foiled in 
the attempt to extort for the dead some 
syllable of acknowledgment from the 
lips of her late companion. 

“ ’Deed she was that ! — a wheen ower 
patient wi’ some. But that cam’ o’ haein 
mair hert nor brains. She had feelin’s 
gin ye like — and to spare. But I never 
took ower ony o’ the stock. It’s a pity 
she hadna the jeedgment to match, for 
she never misdoobted onybody eneuch. 
But I wat it disna maitter noo, for she’s 
gane whaur it’s less wantit. For ane ’at 
has the hairmlessness o’ the doo i’ this 
ill-wulled warl’, th^e’s a feck o’ ten ’at 
has the wisdom o’ tlie serpent. An’ the 
serpents mak sair wark wi’ the doos — 
lat alane them ’at flees into the verra 
mou’s o’ them.” 

“ Weel, ye’re jist richt there,” said 
Mrs. Mellis. “An’ as ye say, she was 
aye some easy to perswaud. I hae nae 
doobt she believed to the verra last he 
wad come back and mairry her.” 

“ Come back and mairry her ! Wha or 
what div ye mean ? I jist tell ye. Mistress 
Mellis — an’ it’s weel ye’re named — gin 
ye daur to hint at ae word o’ sic clavers, 
it’s this side o’ this door o’ mine ye s’ be 
less acquant wi’.” 

As she spoke, the hawk eyes of Miss 
Horn glowed on each side of her hawk 
nose, which grew more and more hook- 
ed as she glared, while her neck went 
craning forward as if she were on the 
point of making a swoop on the offender. 
Mrs. Mellis’s voice trembled with some- 
thing very like fear as she replied : 

“ Gude guide ’s. Miss Horn ! What 
hae I said to gar ye look at. me sae by 
ordinar ’s that ?” 


7 


8 


MALCOLM. 


“ Said !” repeated Miss Plorn, in a j 
tone that revealed both annoyance with j 
herself and contempt for her visitor, j 
“ There’s no a claver in a’ the country- 
side but ye maun fess ’t hame aneth yer 
oxter, as gin ’t were the prodigal afore 
he repentit. Ye s’ get sma’ thanks for 
sic like here. An’ her lyin’ there as 
she’ll lie till the jeedgment-day, puir 
thing !” 

“ I’m sure I meant no offence, Miss 
Horn,” said her visitor. “I thocht a’ 
body kent ’at she was ill aboot him.” 

“ Aboot wha, i’ the name o’ the father 
o’ lees ?” 

“ Ow, aboot that lang-leggit doctor 
’at set oot for the Ingies, an’ dee’d afore 
he wan across the equautor. Only fouk 
said he was nae mair deid nor a halvert 
worm, an’ wud be hame whan she was 
merried.” 

“ It ’s a’ lees frae held to fut, an’ frae 
hert to skin.” 

“ Weel, it was plain to see she dwyn- 
ed awa efter he gaed, an’ never was her- 
sel’ again — ye dinna deny that.” 

“ It’s a’ havers,” persisted Miss Horn, 
but in accents considerably softened. 
"She cared no more aboot the chiel 
nor I did mysel’. She dwyned, I grant 
ye, an’ he gaed awa, I grant ye ; but 
the win’ blaws an’ the water rins, an’ 
the tane has little to do wi’ the tither.” 

"Weel, weel; I’m sorry I said ony- 
thing to offen’ ye, an’ I canna say mair. 
Wi’ yer leave. Miss Horn, I’ll jist gang 
an’ tak’ a last leuk at her, puir thing !” 

" ’Deed, ye s’ du naething o’ the kin’! 

I s’ lat nobody glower at her ’at wad 
gang and spairge sic havers aboot her. 
Mistress Mellis. To say ’at sic a doo 
as my Grizel, puir, saft-hertit, winsome 
thing, wad hae luikit twise at ony sic a 
serpent as him ! Na, na, mem 1 Gang 
yer wa’s hame, an’ come back straucht 
frae yer prayers the morn’s mornin’. 
By that time she’ll be quaiet in her cof- 
fin, and I’ll be quaiet i’ my temper. 
Syne I’ll lat ye see her — maybe. — I 
wiss I was weel rid o’ the sicht o’ her, 
for I canna bide it. Lord, I canna bide 
it.” 

These last words were uttered in a 
murmured aside, inaudible to Mrs. Mel- 


lis, to whom, however, they did not ap- 
ply, but to the dead body. She rose not- 
withstanding in considerable displeas- 
ure, and with a formal farewell walked 
from the room, casting a curious glance 
as she left it in the direction of that 
where the body lay, and descending the 
stairs as slowly as if on every step she 
deliberated whether the next would bear 
her weight. Miss Horn, who had fol- 
lowed her to the head of the stair, 
watched her out of sight below the 
landing, when she turned and walked 
back once more into the parlor, but 
with a lingering look toward the oppo- 
site room, as if she saw through the 
closed door what lay white on the white 
bed. 

" It’s a God’s mercy I hae no feel- 
in’s,” she said to herself. "To even my 
bonny Grizel to sic a lang kyte-clung 
chiel as yon I Aih, puir Grizel I She's 
gane like a knotless threid.” 


CHAPTER IT. 

BARBARA CATANACH. 

Miss Horn was interrupted by the 
sound of the latch of the street door, 
and sprung from her chair in anger. 

" Canna they lat her sleep for five 
meenutes ?” she cried aloud, forgetting 
that there was no fear of rousing her 
any more. — " It’ll be Jean come in frae 
the pump,” she reflected, after a mo- 
ment’s pause ; but, hearing no footstep 
along the passage to the kitchen, con- 
cluded — " It’s no her, for she gangs 
aboot the hoose like the fore half o’ a 
new-shod cowt;” and went down the 
stair to see who might have thus pre- 
sumed to enter unbidden. 

In the kitchen, the floor of which was 
as white as scrubbing could make it, 
and sprinkled with sea-sand — under the 
gayly-painted Dutch clock, which went 
on ticking as loud as ever, though just 
below the dead — sat a woman about 
sixty years of age, whose plump face to 
the first glance looked kindly, to the 
second, cunning, and to the third, evil. 
To the last look the plumpness appear- 
ed unhealthy, suggesting a doughy in- 


MALCOLM. 


9 


dentation to the finger, and its color 
was also pasty. Her deep-set, black- 
bright eyes, glowing from under the 
darkest of eyebrows, which met over 
her nose, had something of a fascinat- 
ing influence — so much so that at a first 
interview one was not likely for a time 
to notice any other of her features. She 
rose as Miss Horn entered, buried a fat 
fist in a soft side, and stood silent. 

“ VVeel ?” said Miss Horn, interroga- 
tively, and was silent also. 

“ I thocht ye micfit want a cast o’ my 
callin’,” said the woman. 

” Na, na ; there’s no a han’ ’at s’ lay 
finger upo’ the bairn but mine ain,” 
said Miss Horn. “ I had it a’ ower, my 
lee lane, afore the skreigh o’ day. She’s 
lyin’ quaiet noo — verra quaiet — waitin’ 
upo’ Watty Witherspail. Whan he fesses 
hame her bit boxie, we s’ hae her laid 
canny intill ’t, an’ hae dune wi’ ’t.” 

“ Weel, mem, for a leddy-born, like 
yersel’, I maun say, ye tak it unco com- 
posed!” 

“ I’m no awaur, Mistress Catanach, 
o’ ony necessity laid upo’ ye to say yer 
min’ i’ this hoose. It’s no expeckit. But 
what for sud I no tak’ it wi’ composur’ ? 
We’ll hae to tak’ oor ain turn er lang, 
as composed as we hae the skiel o’, and 
gang oot like a lang-nibbit can’le — ay, 
an lea’ jist sic a memory ahin’ some o’ 
’s, Bawby.” 

“ I kenna gin ye mean me. Miss 
Horn,” said the woman; “but it’s no 
that muckle o’ a memory I expec’ to 
lea’ ahin’ me.” 

“ The less the better,” muttered Miss 
Horn ; but her unwelcome visitor went 
on : 

“ Them ’at ’s maist i’ debt kens 
least aboot it ; and their mithers canna 
be said to hae muckle to be thankfu’ for. 
It’s God’s trowth, I Len waur nor ever I 
did, mem. A body in my trade canna 
help fa’in’ amo’ ill company whiles, for 
we’re a’ born in sin, an’ brocht furth in in- 
iquity, as the Buik says ; in fac’, it’s a’ sin 
thegither : we come o’ sin an’ we gang 
for sin; but ye ken the likes o’ me maunna 
clype {tell tales). A’ the same, gien ye 
dinna tak the help o’ my han’, ye winna 
refuse me the sicht o’ my een, puir thing !” 


“ There’s nane sail luik upon her deid 
’at wasna a pleesur’ till her livin’ ; an’ 
ye ken weel eneuch, Bawby, she cudna 
thole the sicht o' you." 

“An’ guid rizzon had she for that, 
gien a’ ’at gangs throu’ my heid or I 
fa’ asleep i’ the lang mirk nichts be a 
hair better nor ane o’ the auld wife’s 
fables that the holy Bulk maks sae licht 
o’!” 

“What mean ye?” demanded Miss 
Horn, sternly and curtly. 

“ I ken what I mean mysel’, an’ ane 
that’s no content wi’ that, bude ill be a 
howdie {midwife). I wad fain hae got- 
ten a fancy oot o’ my heid that’s been 
there this mony a lang year, and for 
that I wad fain hae seen her. But 
please yersel’, mem, gien ye winna be 
neeborly ; thof, maybe, ye’re mair obli- 
gated nor ye ken, for a’ ye luik at me 
sae sair asklent,” 

“Ye s’ no gang near her — no to save 
ye frae a’ the ill dreams that ever geth- 
ered aboot a sin-stappit bowster!” cri^d 
Miss Horn, and drew down her long 
upper lip in a strong arch. 

“ Ca cannie ! ca cannie !” {drive 
gently), said Bawby. “ Dinna anger 
me ower sair, for I am but mortal. 
Fowk tak a heap frae you. Miss Horn, 
’at they’ll tak frae nane ither, for yer 
temper’s weel kent, an’ little made o’ ; 
but it’s an ill-faured thing to anger the 
howdie — sae muckle lies- upo’ her; an’ 
I’m no i’ the tune to put up wi’ muckle 
the nicht. I wonner at ye bein’ sae 
oonneebor-like — at sic a time tu, wi’ a 
corp i’ the hoose !” 

“Gang awa — gang oot o’t: it’s my 
hoose,’* said Miss Horn, in a low, hoarse 
voice, restrained from rising to tempest 
pitch only by the consciousness of what 
lay on the other side of the ceiling above 
her head. “ I wad as sune lat a cat in- 
till the deid-chaumer to gang loupin’ 
ower the corp, or may be waur, as I 
wad lat yersel’ intill ’t, Bawby Cata- 
nach ; an’ there’s till ye !” 

At this moment the opportune en- 
trance of Jean afforded fitting occasion 
to her mistress for leaving the room 
without encountering the dilemma of 
either turning the woman out — a pro- 


lO 


MALCOLM. 


ceeding which the latter, from the way- 
in which she set her short, stout figure 
square on the floor, appeared ready to 
resist — or of herself abandoning the 
field in discomfiture. She turned and 
marched from the kitchen with her head 
in the air, and the gait of one who had 
been insulted on her own premises. 

She was sitting in the parlor, still red- 
faced and wrathful, when Jean entered, 
and, closing the door behind her, drew 
near to her mistress, with a narrative, 
commenced at the door, of all she had 
seen, heard and done while “ oot an’ 
aboot i’ the toon.” But Miss Horn in- 
terrupted her the moment she began to 
speak. 

“ Is that woman furth the hoose, 
Jean ?” she asked, in the tone of one 
who awaited her answer in the affirm- 
ative as a preliminary condition of all 
further conversation. 

“ She’s gane, mem,” answered Jean — 
adding to herself in a wordless thought, 
“ I’m no sayin’ whaur." 

“ She’s a woman I wadna hae ye 
throng wi’, Jean.” 

“ I ken no ill o’ her, mem,” returned 
Jean. 

“She’s eneuch to corrup’ a kirkyaird !” 
said her mistress, with more force than 
fitness. Jean was on the shady side of 
fifty, and more likely to have already 
yielded than to be liable to a first assault 
of corruption. 

But little did Miss Horn think how 
useless was her warning, or where Bar- 
bara Catanach was at that very moment. 
Trusting to Jean’s cunning, as well she 
might, she was in the dead-chamber, 
and standing over the dead. She had 
folded back the sheet — not from the face, 
but from the feet — and raised the night- 
dress of fine linen in which the love of 
her cousin had robed the dead for the 
repose of the tomb. 

“ It wad hae been tellin’ her,” she 
muttered, “to hae spoken Bawby fair! 
I’m no used to be fa’en foul o’ that 
gait. I s’ be even wi’ her yet. I’m 
thinkin’ — the auld speldin’ ! Losh I an’ 
Praise be thankit I there it’s ! It’s there ! 
— a wee darker, but the same — jist 
whaur I could ha’ laid the pint o’ my 


finger upo’ ’t i’ the mirk ! Noo lat the 
worms eat it,” she concluded, as she 
folded down the linen of shroud and 
sheet — “ an’ no mortal ken o’ ’t but my- 
sel’ an’ him ’at bude till hae seen ’t, gin 
he was a hair better nor Glenkindie’s 
man i’ the auld ballant!” 

The instant she had rearranged the 
garments of the dead, she turned and 
made for the door with a softness of step 
that strangely contrasted with the pon- 
derousness of her figure, and indicated 
therefore great muscular strength ; open- 
ed it with noiseless circumspection to 
the width of an inch, peeped from the 
crack, and seeing the opposite door still 
shut, stepped out with' a swift, noiseless 
swing of person and door simultane- 
ously, closed the latter behind her, stole 
down the stairs, and left the house. Not 
a board creaked, not a latch clicked as 
she went. She stepped into the street 
as sedately as if she had come from 
paying to the dead the last duties of 
her calling, the projected front of her 
person appearing itself aware of its dig- 
nity as the visible sign and symbol of a 
good conscience and kindly heart. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE MAD LAIRD. 

When Mistress Catanach arrived at 
the opening of a street which was just 
opposite her own door, and led steep 
toward the sea-town, she stood, and 
shading her eyes with her hooded hand 
although the sun was far behind her, 
looked out to sea. It was the forenoon 
of a day of early summer. The larks 
were many and loud in the skies above 
her — for, although she stood in a street, 
she was only a few yards from the green 
fields — but she could hardly have heard 
them, for their music was not for her. 
To the north, whither her gaze — if gaze 
it could be called — was directed, all but 
cloudless blue heavens stretched over 
an all but shadowless blue sea ; two 
bold, jagged promontories, one on each 
side of her, far apart, formed the bay ; 
between that on the west and the sea- 
town at her feet lay a great curve of yel- 


MALCOLM. 


II 


low sand, upon which the long breakers, 
born of last night’s wind, were still roar- 
ing from the north-east, although the gale 
had now sunk to a breeze — cold and of 
doubtful influence. From the chimneys 
of the fishermen’s houses below ascend- 
ed a yellowish smoke, which, against the 
'blue of the sea, assumed a dull green 
color as it drifted vanishing toward the 
south-west. But Mrs. Catanach was 
looking neither at nor for anything; 
she had no fisherman husband, or any 
other relative, at sea ; she was but re- 
volving something in her unwholesome 
mind ; and this was her mode of con- 
cealing an operation which naturally 
would have been performed with down- 
bent head and eyes on the ground. 

While she thus stood a strange figure 
drew near, approaching her with step 
almost as noiseless as that with which 
she had herself made her escape from 
Miss Horn’s house. At a few yards 
distance from her it stood, and gazed 
up at her countenance as intently as 
she seemed to be gazing on the sea. 
It was a man of dwarfish height and 
uncertain age^ with a huge hump upon 
his back, features of great refinement, a 
long thin beard, and a forehead unnatu- 
rally large, over eyes which, although 
of a pale blue, mingled with a certain 
mottled milky gleam, had a pathetic, 
dog-like expression. Decently dressed 
in black, he stood with his hands in the 
pockets of his trowsers, gazing immo- 
vably in Mrs. Catanach’s face. Becom- 
ing suddenly aware of his presence, she 
glanced downward, gave a great start 
and a half scream, and exclaimed in no 
gentle tones, 

“ Whaur come_y<? frae ?” 

It was neither that she did not know 
the man, nor that she meant any of- 
fence : her words were the mere em- 
bodiment of the annoyance of startled 
surprise ; but their effect was peculiar. 

Without a single other motion he 
turned abruptly on one heel, gazed sea- 
ward with quick-flushed cheeks and 
glowing eyes, and, apparently too polite 
to refuse an answer to the evidently un- 
pleasant question, replied in low, almost 
sullen tones : 


“ I dinna ken whaur I come frae. Ye 
’at I dinna ken whaur I come frae. 
I dinna ken whaur come frae. I 
dinna ken whaur onybody comes frae.” 

“ Hoot, laird ! nae offence ! ” returned 
Mrs. Catanach. It was yer ain wyte. 
What gart ye stan’ glowerin’ at a body 
that gait, ohn telled them ’at ye was 
there ?” 

“ I thocht ye was luikin’ whaur ye 
cam frae,” returned the man in tones 
apologetic and hesitating. 

" ’Deed I fash wi’ nae sic freits,” said 
Mrs. Catanach. 

I 

“ Sae lang’s ye ken whaur ye ’re gaein’ 
till,” suggested the man. 

“ Toots ! I fash as little wi’ that either, 
and ken jist as muckle about the tane 
as the tither,” she answered with a low 
oily guttural laugh of contemptuous pity. 

“ I ken mair nor that mysel’, but no 
muckle,” said the man. “ I dinna ken 
whaur I cam frae, and I dinna ken whaur 
I’m gaun till ; but I ken ’at I’m gaun 
whaur I cam frae. That stan’s to rizzon, 
ye see ; but they telled me 'dXye kenned 
a’ about whaur we a’ cam frae.” 

“ Deil a bit o’ ’t !” persisted Mrs. Cat- 
anach, in tones of repudiation. “ What 
care I whaur I cam frae, sae lang ’s — ” 

“ Sae lang ’s what, gien ye please?” 
pleaded the man, with a childlike en- 
treaty in his voice. 

“ Weel — gien ye wull hae ’t — sae 
lang ’s I cam frae my mither,” said the 
woman, looking down on the inquirer 
with a vulgar laugh. 

The hunchback uttered a shriek of 
dismay, and turned and fled ; and, as he 
turned, long, thin, white hands flashed 
out of his pockets, clasped his ears, and 
intertwined their fingers at the back of his 
neck. With a marvelous swiftness he shot 
down the steep descent toward the shore. 

“The deil ’s in’t ’at. I bude to anger 
him !” said the woman, and walked 
away, with a short laugh of small satis- 
faction. 

The style she had given the hunch- 
back was no nickname. Stephen Stew- 
art was laird of the small property and 
ancient house of Kirkbyres, of which his 
mother managed the affairs — hardly for 
her son, seeing that, beyond his clothes 


12 


MALCOLM, 


and five pounds a year of pocket-money, 
he derived no personal advantage from 
his possessions. He never went near 
his own house, for, from some unknown 
reason, plentifully aimed at in the dark 
by the neighbors, he had such a dislike 
to his mother that he could not bear to 
hear the name of mother, or even the 
slightest allusion to the relationship. 

Some said he was a fool ; others a 
madman ; some both ; none, however, 
said he was a rogue ; and all would have 
been willing to allow that whatever it 
might be that caused the difference 
between him and other men, through- 
out the disturbing element floated the 
mist of a sweet humanity. 

Along the shore, in the direction of 
the great rocky promontory that closed 
in the bay on the west, with his hands 
still clasped over his ears, as if the awful 
word were following him, he flew rather 
than fled. It was nearly low water, and 
the wet sand afforded an easy road to 
his flying feet. Betwixt sea and shore, 
a sail in the offing the sole other mov- 
ing thing in the solitary landscape, like 
a hunted creature he sped, his footsteps 
melting and vanishing behind him in 
the half-quick sand. 

Where the curve of the water-line 
turned northward at the root of the pro-, 
montory, six or eight fish’ing-boats were 
drawn up on the beach in various stages 
of existence. One was little more than 
half built, the fresh wood shining against 
the background of dark rock. Another 
was newly tarred ; its sides glistened 
with the rich shadowy brown, and filled 
the air with a comfortable odor. Another 
wore age-long neglect on every plank 
and seam ; half its props had sunk or 
decayed, and the huge hollow leaned 
low on one side, disclosing the squalid 
desolation of its lean-ribbed and naked 
interior, producing all the phantasmic 
effect of a great swampy ^esert; and old 
pools of water, overgrown with a green 
scum, lay in the hollows between its rot- 
ting timbers, while the upper planks were 
baking and cracking in the sun. They 
were huge open boats, carrying about 
ten tons, and rowed by eight men 
with oars of tremendous length and 


weight, with which they had to toil in- 
deed when the^ could not use their lug 
sails. Near where they lay a steep path 
ascended the cliff, whence through grass 
and plqughed land it led across the pro- 
montory to the fishing village of Scaur- 
nose, which lay on the other side 
of it. There the mad laird, or Mad 
Humpy, as he was called by the baser 
sort, often received shelter, chiefly from 
the family of a certain Joseph Mair, one 
of the most respectable mhabitants of 
the place, which, however, at this time, 
was not specially remarkable for any of 
the Christian virtuesv 

The way he now pursued was very 
rocky and difficult, lying close under 
the cliffs of the headland. He passed 
the boats, going between them and the 
cliffs, without even a glance at the two 
men who were at work on the unfinish- 
ed boat. One of them was his friend 
Joseph Mair. They ceased their work, 
for a moment to look after him. 

“ That’s the puir laird again,” said 
Joseph, the instant he was beyond hear- 
ing. “Something’s wrang wi’ him. I 
wonner what’s come ower him !” 

“ I haena seen him for a while noo,” 
returned the other. ” They tell me ’at 
his mither made him ower to the deil 
afore he cam to the light ; and sae, aye 
as his birthday comes roun’, Sawtan 
gets the pooer ower him.. Eh, but he’s 
a fearsome sicht when he’s ta’en that 
gait!” continued the speaker. “I met 
him ance i’ the gloamin’, jist ower by 
the toon, wi’ his een glowerin’ like uily 
lamps, an’ the slaver rinnin’ doon his 
lang baird. I jist laup as gien I had 
seen the muckle Sawtan himsel’.” 

“ Ye not na [needed not) hae dune 
that,” was the reply. ” He’s jist as 
hairmless, e’en at the warst, as ony 
lamb. He’s but a puir creatur’ wha’s 
tribble’s ower strang for him — that’s a’. 
Sawtan has as little to du wi’ him as wi’ 
ony man I ken.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

PHEMY MAIR. 

With eyes that stared as if they and 
not her ears were the organs of hearing, 


MALCOLM. 


13 


this talk was heard by a child of about 
ten years of age, who sat in the bottom 
of the ruined boat, like a pearl in a de- 
caying oyster-shell, one hand arrested 
in the act of dabbling in a green pool, 
the other on its way to her lips with a 
mouthful of the sea-weed, there called 
dulse. She was the daughter of Joseph 
Mair just mentioned — a fisherman who 
had been to sea as a man-of-war’s man, 
in consequence of which his to-name or 
nickname was Blue Peter, and having 
been found capable, had been employed 
as carpenter’s mate, and had come to 
be very handy with his tools. Having 
saved a little money by serving in an- 
other man’s boat, he was now build- 
ing one for himself. He was a dark- 
complexioned, foreign - looking man, 
with gold rings in his ears, which he 
said enabled him to look through the 
wind without being blinded by the 
watering of his eyes. Unlike most of 
the fishermen upon that coast at the 
time, he was a sober and indeed thought- 
ful man, ready to listen to the voice of 
reason from any quarter. His fellows 
were, in general, men of hardihood and 
courage, encountering as a mere matter 
of course such perilous weather as the 
fishers on a great part of our coasts 
would have declined to meet. During 
the fishing season they were diligent in 
their calling, and made a good deal of 
money ; but when the weather was such 
that they could not go to sea, when their 
nets were in order, and nothing special 
requiring to be done, they would have 
a bout of hard drinking, and spend a 
great portion of what ought to have 
been their provision for the winter. 
The women were in general coarse in 
manners and rude in speech ; often of 
great strength and courage, and of 
strongly-marked character. They were 
almost invariably the daughters of fish- 
ermen, for a wife taken from among the 
rural population would have been all 
but useless in regard of the peculiar 
duties required of her. If these were 
less dangerous than those of their hus- 
bands, they were quite as laborious, and 
less interesting. The most severe con- 
sisted in carrying the fish into the country 


for sale in a huge creel or basket,* which 
when full was sometimes more than a 
man could lift to place on the woman’s 
back. With this burden, kept in its 
place by a band across her chest, she 
would walk as many as twenty miles, 
arriving at some inland town early in 
the forenoon, in time to dispose of her 
fish for the requirements of the day. I 
may add that her eldest child wa^rob- 
ably born within a few weeks after her 
marriage ; but infidelity was almost un- 
known. 

In some respects, although in none 
of the good qualities, Mrs. Mair was an 
exception to her class. Herself the 
daughter of a fisherman, her mother 
had been the daughter of a small farm- 
er, and she bad well-to-do relations in 
an inland parish : how much this fact 
was concerned in the result it would be 
hard to say, but certainly she was one 
of those elect whom Nature sends into 
the world for the softening and elevation 
of her other children. She was still slight 
and graceful, with a clear complexion 
and the prettiest teeth possible. Long 
before this time she must have lost all 
her complexion and most of her grace 
had it not been for two reasons : her 
husband’s prudence had rendered hard 
work less imperative, while he had a 
care even of her good looks altogether 
unique ; and he had a rough, honest 
sister who lived with them, and whom 
it would have been no kindness to keep 
from the hardest work, seeing it was 
only through such that she could have 
found a sufficiency of healthy interest 
in life. Annie Mair assisted with the 
nets, and the cleaning and drying of 
the fish, of which they cured consider- 
able quantities : these, with her house- 
hold and maternal duties, afforded her 
ample occupation. Their children 
were well trained, and being, from the 
narrowness of their house-accommoda- 
tion, far more with their parents than 
would otherwise have been the case, 
heard a good deal to make them think 
after their faculty. 

The mad laird was, as I have said, a 
visitor at their house oftener than any- 
where else. On such occasions he slept 


14 


MALCOLM. 


in a garret accessible by a ladder from 
the ground floor, which consisted only 
of a kitchen and a closet. Little Phemy 
Mair was therefore familiar with his ap- 
pearance, his ways, and his speech, and 
was a favorite with him, although hither- 
to his shyness has been sufficient to pre- 
vent any approach to intimacy even with 
a child of ten. 

From speedy exhaustion the poor 
fellow soon ceased his wild running. 
As he stopped he withdrew his hands 
from his ears, and in rushed the sound 
of the sea, the louder that the caverns 
of his brain had been so long closed to 
its entrance. With a moan of dismaY 
he once more pressed his palms against 
them, and thus deafened, shouted with 
a voice of agony into the noise of the 
rising tide : “ I dinna ken whaur I come 
frae !” after which cry, wrung from the 
grief of human ignorance, he once more 
took to his heels, though with far less 
swiftness than before, and fled stumb- 
ling and scrambling over the rocks. 

Scarcely had he vanished from view 
of the boats, when Phemy scrambled 
out of her big mussel-shell. Its up- 
heaved side being toward the boat at 
which her father was at work, she escaped 
unperceived, and so ran along the base 
of the promontory, where the rough way 
was perhaps easier to the feet of a child 
content to take smaller steps and climb 
or descend by the help of more insig- 
nificant inequalities. She came within 
sight of the laird just as he turned into 
the mouth of a well-known cave and 
vilnished. 

Phemy was one of those rare and 
blessed natures which have endless cour- 
age because they have no distrust, and 
she ran straight into the cave after him, 
without even stopping to look in. 

It was not a very interesting cave at 
first sight. The strata of which it was 
composed, upheaved almost to the per- 
pendicular, shaped an opening like the 
half of a Gothic arch divided vertically 
and leaning over a little to one side, 
which rose to its whole height, and 
seemed to lay open every corner of it 
to a single glance. This large entrance 
allowed abundance of light and air in 


the cave, which in length was only about 
four or five times its width. The floor 
was perfectly dry, consisting of hard 
rock, with a trodden covering of some 
earthy stratum — probably all that re- 
mained of what had once filled the 
hollow. The walls and roof were suf- 
ficiently jagged with projections and 
dark with recesses, but there was little 
to rouse any frightful fancies. 

When Phemy entered it the laird was 
nowhere to be seen. But she went 
straight to the back of the cave, to its 
farthest visible point. There she rounded 
a projection and began an ascent which 
only familiarity with rocky ways could 
have enabled such a child to accom- 
plish. At the top she passed through 
another opening, and by a longer and 
more gently sloping descent reached 
the floor of a second cave, as level and 
nearly as smooth as a table. On her 
left hand, what light managed to creep 
through the tortuous entrance was 
caught and reflected in a dull glimmer 
from the undefined surface of a well of 
fresh water which lay in a sort of basin in 
the rock ; and on a bedded stone beside 
it sat the laird, with his head in his 
hands, his elbows on his knees, and his 
hump upheaved above his head, like 
Mount Sinai over that of Christian in 
the Pilgrim’s Progress. 

As his hands were still pressed on his 
ears, he heard nothing of Phemy’s ap- 
proach, and she stood for a while star- 
ing at him in the vague glimmer, ap- 
parently with no anxiety as to what was 
to come next. 

Weary at length — for the forlorn man 
continued movelessly sunk in his own 
thoughts, or what he had for such — the 
eyes of the child began to wander about 
the darkness, to which they had already 
got so far accustomed as to make the 
most of the scanty light. Presently she 
fancied she saw something glitter, away 
in the darkness — two things : they must 
be eyes ! — the eyes of an otter or a pole- 
cat, in which creatures the caves along 
the shore abounded. Seized with sudden 
fright, she ran to the laird and laid her 
hand on his shoulder, crying, “Leuk, 
laird, leuk!” 


MALCOLM. 


15 


He started to his feet and gazed be- 
wildered at the child, rubbing his eyes 
once and again. She stood between the 
well and the entrance, so that all the 
light there was, gathered upon her pale 
face. 

“Whaur do ye come frae?” he cried. 

“ I cam frae the auld boat,” she 
answered. 

“ What do ye want wi’ me ?” 

“ Naething, sir : I only cam to see hoo 
ye was gettin’ on. I wadna hae dis- 
turbit ye, sir, but I saw the twa een o’ a 
wullcat, or sic like, glowerin’ awa yon- 
ner i’ the mirk, an’ they fleyt me ’at I 
grippit ye.” 

“ Weel, weel; sit ye doon, bairnie,” 
said the mad laird in a soothing voice : 
“ the wullcat sanna touch ye. Ye’re no 
fleyt at me, are ye ?” 

” Eh, na !” answered the child. “What 
for sud I be fleyt at you, sir ? I’m Phe- 
my Main” 

“Eh, bairnie! it’s you, is’t ?” he re- 
turned in tones of satisfaction, for he 
had not hitherto recognized her. “Sit 
ye doon,_sit ye doon, an’ we’ll see aboot 
it a’.” 

Phemy obeyed, and seated herself on 
the nearest projection. The laird placed 
himself beside her, and once more buried 
his face, but not his ears, in his hands. 
Nothing sought to enter those ears, how- 
ever, but the sound of the rising tide, for 
Phemy sat by him in the faintly glim- 
mering dusk, as without fear felt, so 
without word spoken. 

The evening drew on, and the night 
came down, but all the effect of the 
growing darkness was but to draw the 
child gradually nearer to her uncouth 
companion, until at length her hand 
stole into his, her head sank upon his 
shoulder, his arm went round her to 
hold her safe, and thus she fell fast 
asleep. After a while, the laird, coming 
to a knowledge of her condition, gently 
roused her and took her home, where 
they found her father and mother in 
much concern at her absence. On their 
way the mad laird warned his com- 
panion, in strange yet comprehensible 
utterance, to say nothing of where she 
had found him, for if she exposed his 


place of refuge, wicked people would 
take him, and he should never see her 
again. 


CHAPTER V. 

LADY FLORIMEL. 

The sun had been up for some time 
in a cloudless sky. The wind had 
changed to the south, and wafted soft 
country odors to the shore, in place 
of sweeping to inland farms the scents 
of sea- weed and broken salt waters, 
mingled with a suspicion of icebergs. 
From what was called the Seaton, or 
sea-town, of Portlossie, a solitary figure 
was walking westward along the sands, 
which bordered the shore from the root 
of the promontory of Scaurnose to the 
little harbor which lay on the other side 
of the Seaton. Beyond the harbor the 
rocks began again, bold and high, of 
a gray and brown hard stone, and after 
a mighty sweep, shot out northward, 
and closed in the bay on the east with 
a second great promontory. The long 
curved strip of sand was the only open 
portion of the coast for miles : the rest 
was all closed in with high rocky cliffs. 
At this one spot the coasting vessel 
gliding past gained a pleasant peep of 
open fields, belts of wood and farm- 
houses, with here and there a great 
house glimpsing from amidst its trees. 
In the distance one or two bare solitary 
hills, imposing in aspect only from their 
desolation, rose to the height of over a 
thousand feet, but their form gave no 
effect to their altitude. 

On this open part of the shore, par- 
allel with its line, and at some distance 
beyond the usual high-water mark, the 
waves of ten thousand northern storms 
had cast up a long dune or bank of 
sand, terminating toward the west with- 
in a few yards of a huge solitary rock 
of the ugly kind called conglomerate. 
It had been separated from the roots of 
the promontory by the rush of waters at 
unusually high tides, which often in 
winter rounded the rock, and running 
down behind the dune, turned it into a 
long island. The sand on the inland side 


i6 


MALCOLM. 


of it, which was now covered with short 
sweet grass, browsed on by sheep, and 
with the largest and reddest of daisies, 
was thus often swept by wild salt waves 
in winter, and at times, when the north- 
ern wind blew straight from the regions 
of endless snow, lay a sheet of gleaming 
ice. 

Over this grass came the figure I have 
mentioned, singing. On his left hand 
the ground rose to the high road ; on 
' his right was the dune, interlaced and 
bound together by the long clasping 
roots of the coarse bent, without which its 
sands would have been the sport of every 
wind that blew. It shut out from him 
all sight of the sea, but the moan and 
rush of the rising tide sounded close be- 
hind it. At his back rose the town of 
Portlossie, high above the harbor and 
the sea-town, with its houses of gray and 
brown stone, roofed with blue slates and 
red tiles. It was no highland town — 
scarce one within it could speak the 
highland tongue, yet down from its 
high streets on the fitful air of the 
morning now floated intermittently the 
sound of bagpipes — borne winding from 
street to street, and loud blown to wake 
the sleeping inhabitants and let them 
know that it was now six of the clock. 

He was a youth of about twenty, with 
a long, swinging, heavy-footed stride, 
which took in the ground rapidly. He 
was rather tall, and large-limbed. His 
dress was more like that of a fisherman 
than any other, but hardly admitted 
of classification, consisting of corduroy 
trowsers, much stained, a shirt striped 
blue and white, and a rough pea-jacket, 
which, slung across his shoulder, he 
carried by one sleeve. On his head he 
wore a broad blue bonnet, with a tuft 
of scarlet in the centre. 

His face was more than handsome — 
not finely cut, but large-featured, with a 
look of mingled nobility and ingenuous- 
ness — the latter amounting to simplicity, 
or even innocence ; while the clear out- 
look from his full and well-opened hazel 
eyes indicated both courage and prompt- 
itude. His dark brown hair came in 
large curling masses from under his bon- 
net. It was such a form and face as would 


have drawn every eye in a crowded 
thoroughfare. 

About the middle of the long sand- 
hill its top was cut into a sort of wide 
embrasure, in which stood an old-fash- 
ioned brass swivel-gun : when he came 
under it, the lad sprung up the sloping 
side of the dune, seated himself on the 
gun, drew from his trowsers a large 
silver watch, regarded it steadily for a 
few minutes, replaced it, took from 
his pocket a flint and steel, kindled 
therewith a bit of touch-paper, and ap- 
plied it to the vent of the swivel. Fol- 
lowed a great roar. But through its 
echoes a startled cry reached his ear, 
and looking along the shore to discover 
whence it came, he spied a woman on 
a low rock that ran a little way out into 
the water. She had half risen from a 
sitting posture, and apparently her cry 
was the result of the discovery that 
the rising tide had overreached and 
surrounded her. He rushed from the 
sand-hill, crying, as he approached her, 
“ Dinna be in a hurry, mem: bide till 
I come to ye and plunging straight 
into the water struggled through the 
deepening tide, the distance being too 
short and the depth almost too shallow 
for swimming. There was no danger 
whatever, but the girl might well shrink 
from plunging into the clear beryl depth 
in which swayed the sea-weed clothing 
the slippery slopes of the rock. The 
youth was by her side in a moment, 
scarcely noticed the bare feet she had 
been bathing in the water, heeded as 
little the motion of the hand which 
waved him back, caught her in his 
arms like a baby, and had her safe on 
the shore ere she could utter a word ; 
nor did he stop until he had carried her 
to the slope of the sand-hill. There he 
set her gently down, and without a sus- 
picion of the liberty he was taking, and 
filled only with a passion of service, was 
proceeding to dry her feet with the jacket 
which he had dropped there as he ran 
to her assistance. 

“ Let me alone, pray,” said the girl 
with a half-amused indignation, draw- 
ing back her feet and throwing down 
a book she carried, that she might the 


MALCOLM. 


better hide them with her skirt. But 
although she shrank from his devotion, 
she could neither mistake it nor help 
being pleased with his kindness. Prob- 
ably she had never before been indebt- 
ed to such an ill-clad individual of the 
human race ; but even in such a dis- 
advantageous costume she could hardly 
help seeing that he was a fine fellow. 
Nor was the impression disturbed when 
he opened his mouth and spoke in the 
broad dialect of the country — softened 
and refined a little by the feeling of her 
presence — for she had no associations 
with it as yet to make her regard its 
homeliness as vulgarity. 

‘‘Where’s yer stockin’s, mem?” he 
said, using his best English. 

‘‘You gave me no time to bring them 
away, you caught me up so — rudely,” 
answered the girl, half querulously, but 
in such lovely speech as had never 
before greeted the ears of the Scotch 
lad. 

Before the words were well beyond 
her lips he was already on his way back 
to the rock, running with great, heavy- 
footed strides. The abandoned shoes 
and stockings were now in imminent 
danger of being floated off by the los- 
ing water. He dashed in, swam a few 
strokes, caught them up, regained the 
shore, and, leaving a wet track all the 
way behind him, but carrying the res- 
cued clothing at arm’s length before 
him, rejoined their owner. He spread 
^his jacket out before her, laid the shoes 
and stockings upon it, and, observing 
that she continued to keep her feet hid- 
den under the skirt of her dress, turned 
his back, and stood. 

‘‘Why don’t you go away?” said the 
girl, venturing one set of toes from under 
their tent, but hesitating to proceed far- 
ther in the business. 

Without a word or a turn of the 
head he walked away. 

Either flattered by his absolute obedi- 
ence, and persuaded that he was a true 
squire, or unwilling to forego what 
amusement she might gain from him, 
she drew in her half-issuing foot, and, 
certainly urged in part by an inherited 
disposition to tease, spoke again. 

2 • 


17 

‘‘You’re not going away without 
thanking me ?” she said. 

‘‘What for, mem?” he returned sim- 
ply, standing stock-still with his back 
toward her. 

‘‘You needn’t stand so. You don’t 
think I would go on dressing while you 
remained in sight ?” 

‘‘ I was as good’s awa’, mem,” he said, 
and, turning a glowing face, looked at 
her for a moment, then cast his eyes on 
the ground. 

‘‘Tell me what you mean by not 
thanking me,” she insisted. 

‘‘They wad be dull thanks, mem, that 
war thankit afore I kenned what for.” 

‘‘For allowing you to carry me ashore, 
of course.” 

‘‘Be thankit, mem, wi’ a’ my hert. 
Will I gang doon o’ my k-nees ?” 

‘‘No. Why should you go on your 
knees ?” 

“ ’Cause ye’re ’maist ower bonny to 
luik at stan’in’, mem, an’ I’m feared 
for angerin’ ye.” 

“Don’t say ma’am to me: I’m not 
a married woman.” 

“ What am I to say, than, mem ? — I 
ask yer pardon, mem.” 

“ Say ‘ my lady.' That’s how people 
speak to me.” 

“ I thocht ye bude {behoved) to be 
somebody by ordinar’, my leddy ! 
That’ll be hoo ye’re so terrible bonny,” 
he returned, with some tremulousness 
in his tone. “ But ye maun put on yer 
hose, my leddy, or ye’ll get yer feet 
cauld, and that’s no guid for the likes 
o’ you.” 

The form of address she prescribed, 
conveyed to him no definite idea of rank. 
It but added intensity to the notion of 
her being a lady, as distinguished from 
one of the women of his own condition 
in life. 

“And pray what is to become of 
you," she returned, “with your clothes 
as wet as water can make them ?” 

“ The saut water kens me ower weel 
to do me ony ill,” returned the lad. “ I 
gang weet to the skin mony a day frae 
mornin’ till nicht, an’ mony a nicht frae 
nicht till mornin’ — at the heerin’ fishin’, 
ye ken, my leddy.” 


i8 


MALCOLM. 


Now what could tempt her to talk 
in such a familiar way to a creature 
like him — human indeed, but separated 
from her by a gulf more impassable far 
than that which divided her from the 
thrones, principalities and powers of 
the upper regions ? And how is the 
fact to be accounted for that here she 
put out a dainty foot, and reaching for 
one ‘of her stockings began to draw it 
gently over the said foot? Either her 
sense of his inferiority was such that 
his presence affected her no more than 
that of a dog, or, possibly, she was 
tempted to put his behavior to the test. 
He, on his part, stood quietly regarding 
the operation, either that, with the in- 
stinct of an inborn refinement, he was 
aware he ought not to manifest more 
shamefacedness than the lady herself, 
or that he was hardly more accustomed 
to the sight of gleaming fish than the 
bare feet of maidens : anyhow, in abso- 
lute simplicity, he went on : 

“ I’m thinkin’, my lady, that sma’ fut 
o’ yer ain has danced mony a braw 
dance on mony a braw flure.” 

“ How old do you take me for, then ?” 
she returned, and went on drawing the 
garment over her foot by the shortest 
possible stages. 

“Ye’ll no be much ower twenty,” he 
said. 

“ I’m only sixteen,” she returned, 
laughing merrily. 

‘‘What will ye be or ye behaud !” he 
exclaimed after a brief pause of aston- 
ishment. 

“ Do you ever dance in this part of 
the country ?” she asked, heedless of 
his surprise. 

“ No that muckle, at least amo’ the 
fisher-folks, excep’ it be at a weddin’. 
I was at ane last nicht.” 

“ And did you dance ?” 

“’Deed did I, my leddy. I danced 
the maist o’ the lasses clean aff o’ their 
legs.” 

“ What made you so cruel ?” 

“ Weel, ye see, mem, — I mean my 
leddy — fowk said I was ill aboot the 
bride ; an’ sae I bude to dance to put 
that oot o’ their heids.” 

“And how much truth was there in 


what they said ?” she asked, with a sly 
glance up in the handsome, now glow- 
ing face. 

“ Gien there was ony, there was unco 
little,” he replied, “ The chield’s wal- 
come till her for me. But she was the 
bonniest lassie we had. — It was what 
they ca’ a penny waddin’,” he went on, 
as if willing to change the subject. 

“And what’s a penny wedding ?” 

“ It’s a kin’ o’ a custom amo’ the 
fishers. There’s some gey puir fowk 
amon’ ’s, ye see, an’ whan a twa o’ them 
merries, the lave o’ ’s wants to gie them 
a bit o’ a start like. Sae we a’ gang to 
the weddin’, an’ eats an’ drinks plenty, 
an’ pays for a’ that we hae ; an’ they 
mak’ a guid profit oot o’ ’t, for the things 
doesna cost them nearhan’ sae muckle 
as we pay. So they hae a guid han’fu’ 
ower for the plenishin’.” 

“ And what do they give you to eat 
and drink ?” asked the girl, making 
talk. 

“ Ow skate an’ mustard to eat, an’ 
whusky to drink,” answered the lad, 
laughing. “ But it’s mair for the fun. I 
dinna care muckle aboot whusky an’ 
that kin’ o’ thing mysel’. It’s the fiddles 
an’ the dancin’ ’at I like.” 

“ You have music, then ?” 

“Yes; jist the fiddles an’ the pipes.” 

“ The bagpipes, do you mean ?” 

“ Yes ; my gran’father plays theml' 

“ But you’re not in the Highlands 
here : how come you to have bag- 
pipes ?” 

“ It’s a stray bag, an’ no more. But 
the fowk here likes ’t weel eneuch, an’ 
hae ’t to wauk them ilka mornin’. Yon 
was my gran’father ye heard afore I 
fired the gun. Yon was his pipes wauk- 
in’ them, honest fowk.” 

“ And what made you fire the gun in 
that reckless way ? Don’t you know 
it is very dangerous ?” 

“Dangerous, mem — my leddy, I 
mean ! There’s naething intill’t but a 
pennyworth o’ blastin’ pooder. It wadna 
blaw the froth aff o’ the tap o’ a jaw” 
[billow). 

“ It nearly blew me out of my small 
wits, though.” 

“ I’m verra sorry it frichtit ye. But 


MALCOLM. 


^9 


gien I had seen ye I could na hae helpit 
it, for I bude to fire the gun.” 

“ I don’t understand you quite ; but I 
suppose you mean that it was your busi- 
ness to fire the gun.” 

“ Yes, my leddy.” 

“ Why ?” 

“ ’Cause it’s been decreet i’ the toon- 
cooncil that at sax o’ the clock ilka 
mornin’ that gun’s to be fired. Ye see 
it’s a royal burgh, this, an’ it costs but 
aboot a penny, an’ it’s gran’ like to hae 
a sma’ cannon to fire. Gien I was to 
neglec’ it, my gran’father wad gang on 
skirlin’ — what’s the English for skirlm\ 
my leddy — skirlin’ o’ the pipes ?” 

“ I don’t know. But from the sound 
of the word I should suppose it stands 
for screaining." 

“ Ay, that’s it ; only screamin's no 
sae guid as skirlm'. My gran’father’s 
an auld man, as I was gaein’ to say, 
an’ has hardly breath eneuch to fill the 
bag; but he wad be efter dirkin’ ony- 
body ’at said sic a thing, and till he 
heard that gun he wad gang on blawin’ 
though he sud burst himsel’. There’s 
naebody kens the smeddum in an auld 
Hielan’man.” 

By the time the conversation had 
reached this point the lady had got her 
shoes on, had taken up her book from 
the sand, and was now sitting with it in 
her lap. No sound reached them but 
that of the tide, for the scream of the 
bagpipes had ceased the moment the 
swivel was fired. The sun was grow- 
ing hot, and the sea, although so far in 
the cold north, was gorgeous in purple 
and green, suffused as with the over- 
powering pomp of a peacock’s plumage 
in the sun. Away to the left the solid 
promontory trembled against the hori- 
zon, as if ready to melt away between 
the bright air and the lucid sea that 
fringed its base with white. The glow 
of a young summer morning pervaded 
earth and sea and sky, and swelled the 
heart of the youth as he stood in uncon- 
scious bewilderment before the self-pos- 
session of the girl. She was younger 
than he, knew far less that was worth 
knowing, yet had a world of advantage 
over him — not merely from the effect 


of her presence on one who had never 
seen anything half so beautiful, but from 
a certain readiness of surface thought, 
combined with the sweet polish of her 
speech, and an assurance of superiority 
which appeared to lift her, like one of 
the old immortals, far above the level 
of the man whom she favored with her 
passing converse. What in her words, 
as here presented only to the eye, may 
seem brusqueness or even forwardness, 
was so tempered, so colored, so inter- 
preted by the tone of naivete in which 
she spoke, that it could give no offence. 
Whatever she said sounded in the 
youth’s ears as absolute condescension. 
As to her personal appearance, the lad 
might well have taken her for twenty, 
for she looked more of a woman than, 
tall and strongly-built as he was, he 
looked of a man. She was rather tall, 
rather slender, finely formed, with small 
hands and feet, and full throat. Her 
hair was of a dark brown ; her eyes of 
such a blue that no one could have sug- 
gested gray; her complexion fair — a 
little freckled, which gave it the warm- 
est tint it had ; her nose nearly straight, 
her mouth rather laiige but well formed, 
and her forehead, as much of it as was 
to be seen under a garden-hat, rose with 
promise above a pair of dark and finely- 
penciled eyebrows. 

The description I have here given oc- 
cupies the space of a brief silence, during 
which the lad stood motionless, like one 
waiting further command. 

“Why don’t you go ?” said the lady. 
“ I want to read my book.” 

He gave a great sigh, as if waking 
from a pleasant dream, took off his 
bonnet with a clumsy movement which 
yet had in it a grace worthy of a Stuart 
court, and turned toward the sea-town. 

When he had gone about a couple of 
hundred yards, he looked back invol- 
untarily. The lady had vanished. He 
concluded that she had crossed to the 
other side of the mound ; but when he 
had gone so far on the way to the village 
as to clear the eastern end of the sand- 
hill, and there turned and looked up its 
southern slope, she was still nowhere to 
be seen. The old highland stories of 


20 


MALCOLM, 


his grandfather crowded back upon him, 
and, altogether human as she had ap- 
peared, he almost doubted whether the 
sea from which he had thought he res- 
cued her was not her native element. 
The book, however, not to mention the 
shoes and stockings, were against the 
supposition. Anyhow, he had seen a 
vision of some order or other, as cer- 
tainly as if an angel from heaven had 
appeared to him : the waters of his mind 
had been troubled with a new sense of 
grace and beauty, giving an altogether 
fresh glory to existence. 

Of course, no one would dream of 
falling in love with an unearthly crea- 
ture, even an angel ; at least, something 
homely must mingle with the glory ere 
that become possible ; and as to this girl, 
the youth could scarcely have regarded 
her with a greater sense of far-off-7iess 
had he known her for the daughter of a 
king of the sea — one whose very ele- 
ment was essentially death to him as life 
to her. Still he walked home as if the 
heavy boots he wore were wings at his 
heels, like those of the little Eurus or 
Boreas that stood blowing his trumpet 
forever in the round open temple which 
from the top of a grassy hill in the park 
overlooked the sea-town. 

“ Sic een !” he kept saying to himself ; 
“an sic sma’ white ban’s! an’ sic a 
bonny fut ! Eh I hoo she wad glitter 
throu’ the water in a bag net! Faith! 
gien she war to sing ‘ come doon ’ to me, 
I wad gang. Wad that be to lowse baith 
sowl an’ body, I wonner ? I’ll see what 
Maister Graham says to that. It’s a fine 
question to put till ’im : ‘ Gien a body 
was to gang wi’ a mermaid, wha they 
say has nae sowl to be saved, wad that 
be the loss o’ his, as weeks o’ the bodily 
life o’ ’m ?’ ” 


CHAPTER VI. 

DUNCAN MACPHAIL. 

The sea-town of Portlossie was as 
irregular a gathering of small cottages 
as could be found on the surface of the 
globe. They faced every way, turned 
their backs and gables every way — only 
of the roofs could you predict the po- 


sition ; were divided from each other by 
every sort of small, irregular space and 
passage, and looked like a national as- 
sembly debating a constitution. Close 
behind the Seaton, as it was called, ran 
a highway, climbing far above the chim- 
neys of the village to the level of the 
town above. Behind this road, and sep- 
arated from it by a high wall of stone, 
lay a succession of heights covered with 
grass. In front of the cottages lay sand 
and sea. The place was cleaner than 
most fishing-villages, but so closely built, 
so thickly inhabited, and* so pervaded 
with “ a very ancient and fish-like 
smell,” that but for the besom of the 
salt north wind it must have been un- 
healthy. Eastward the houses could ex- 
tend no farther for the harbor, and west- 
ward no farther for a small river that 
crossed the sands to find the sea — dis- 
cursively and merrily at low water, but 
with a sullen, submissive mingling when 
banked back by the tide. 

Avoiding the many nets extended long 
and wide on the grassy sands, the youth 
walked through the tide-swollen mouth 
of the river, and passed along the front 
of the village until he arrived at a house 
which stood with its gable seaward and 
its small window filled with a curious 
collection of things for sale — dusty-look- 
ing sweets in a glass bottle ; gingerbread 
cakes in the shape of large hearts, thick- 
ly studded with sugar-plums of rainbow 
colors, invitingly poisonous ; strings of 
tin covers for tobacco-pipes, overlapping 
each other like fish-scales ; toys, and 
tapes, and needles, and twenty other 
kinds of things all huddled together. 

Turning the corner of this house, he 
went down the narrow passage between 
it and the next, and went in at its open 
door. But the moment it was entered it 
lost all appearance of a shop, and the 
room with the tempting window showed 
itself only as a poor kitchen with an 
earthen floor. 

“ Weel, hoo did the pipes behave 
themsels the day, daddy ?” said the 
youth as he strode in. 

“ Och, she ’ll pe peing a coot poy ta- 
day,” returned the tremulous voice of 
a gray-headed old man who was lean- 


MALCOLM, 


^21 


ing over a small peat-fire on the hearth, 
sifting oatmeal through the fingers of 
his left hand into a pot, while he stirred 
the boiling mess with a short stick held 
in his right. 

It had grown to be understood be- 
tween them that the pulmonary condi- 
tions of the asthmatic old piper should 
be attributed not to his internal, but his 
external lungs — namely, the bag of his 
pipes. Both sets had of late years mani- 
fested Strong ‘Symptoms of decay, and 
decided measures had had to be again 
and again resorted to in the case of the 
latter to put off its evil day and keep 
within it the breath of its musical exist- 
ence. The youth’s question, then, as to 
the behavior of the pipes was in real- 
ity an inquiry after the condition of his 
grandfather’s lungs, which grew yearly 
more and more asthmatic ; notwith- 
standing which old Duncan MacPhail, 
however, would not hear of giving up the 
dignity of town-piper, and sinking into 
a mere merchantr*as in Scotland they 
denominate the^smallest shopkeeper. 

“ That’s fine, daddy,” returned the 
youth. “\Vtill I mak oot the parritch ? 
I’m thinkin’ ye’ve had eneuch o’ hing- 
in’ ower the fire this het mornin’.” 

, “ No, sir,” answered Duncan. “She’ll 
pe perfetly able to make ta parritch 
herself, my poy Malcolm. Ta tay will 
dawn when her poy must make his 
own parritch, an’ she ’ll be wantin’ no 
more parritch ; but haf to trink ta rain- 
water, and no trop of ta uisgebeatha to 
put into it, my poy Malcolm.” 

His grandson was quite accustomed 
to the old man’s heathenish mode of 
regarding his immediate existence after 
death as a long confinement in the grave, 
and generally had a word or two ready 
wherewith to combat the frightful no- 
tion ; but, as he spoke, Duncan lifted 
the pot from the fire, and set it on its 
three legs on the deal table in the mid- 
dle of the room, adding : 

“ Tere, my man — tere’s ta parritch ! 
And was it putter, or traicle, or ta pottle 
o’ peer, she would l^e havin’ for kitchie 
tis fine mornin’ ?” 

This point settled, the two sat down 
to eat their breakfast ; and no one would 


have discovered, from the manner in 
which the old man helped himself, nor 
yet from the look of his eyes, that he 
was stone-blind. It came neither of 
old age nor disease — he had been born 
blind. His eyes, although large and 
wide, looked like those of a sleep- 
walker — open with shut sense ; the shine 
in them was all reflected light — glitter, 
no glow ; and their color was so pale 
that they suggested some horrible sight 
as having, driven from them hue and 
vision together. 

“Haf you eated enough, my son?” 
he said, when he heard Malcolm lay 
down his spoon. 

“Ay, plenty, thank ye, daddy, and 
they were richt weel made,” replied the 
lad, whose mode of speech was entirely 
different from his grandfather’s : the lat- 
ter had learned English as a foreign lan- 
guage, and could not speak Scotch, his 
mother-tongue being Gaelic. 

As they rose from the table, a small 
girl, with hair wildly suggestive of in- 
surrection and conflagration, entered, 
and said, in the screech with which the 
thoughtless often address the blind : 

“ Maister MacPhail, my mither wants 
a pot o’ blockin’, an’ ye ’re to gie her ’t 
gweed.” 

“ Eery coot, my chilt, Jeannie ; but 
young Malcolm an’ old Tuncan hasn’t 
made teir prayers yet, and you know 
fery well tat she won’t sell pefore she’s 
made her prayers. Tell your mother 
tat she ’ll pe bringin’ ta blackin’ when 
she comes to look to ta lamp.” 

The child ran off without response. 
Malcolm lifted the pot from the table 
and set it on the hearth ; put the plates 
together and the spoons, and set them 
on a chair, for there was no dresser ; 
tilted the table, and wiped it hearthward ; 
then from a shelf took down and laid 
upon it a Bible, before which he seated 
himself with an air of reverence-. The 
old man sat down on a low chair by the 
chimney corner, took off his bonnet, 
closed his ey’es and murmured some 
almost inaudible words ; then repeated 
in Gaelic the first line of the hundred 
and third psalm — 

O m' anam, beannich thusa nish — 


22 


MALCOLM. 


and raised a tune of marvelous wail. 
Arrived at the end of the line, he re- 
peated the process with the next, and 
so on, giving every line first in the voice 
of speech and then in the voice of song, 
through the first three stanzas of eight 
lines each. No less strange was the 
singing than the tune — wild and wail- 
ful as the wind of his native desola- 
tions, or as the sound of his own pipes 
borne thereon ; and apparently all but 
lawless, for the multitude of so-called 
grace-notes, hovering and fluttering end- 
lessly around the centre tone like the 
comments on a text, rendered it nearly 
impossible to unravel from them the air 
even of a known tune. It had in its 
kind the same liquid uncertainty of con- 
fluent sound which had hitherto rendered 
it impossible for Malcolm to learn more 
than a few common phrases of his 
grandfather’s native speech. 

The psalm over, during which the 
sightless eyeballs of the singer had been 
turned up toward the rafters of the cot- 
tage — a sign surely that the germ of light, 
"the sunny seed,’’ as Henry Vaughan 
calls it, must be in him, else why should 
he lift his eyes when he thought up- 
ward .? — Malcolm read a chapter of the 
Bible, plainly the next in an ordered 
succession, for it could never have been 
chosen or culled ; after which they 
kneeled together, and the old man 
poured out a prayer, beginning in a low, 
scarcely audible voice, which rose at 
length to a loud, modulated chant. Not 
a sentence, hardly a phrase of the ut- 
terance, did his grandson lay hold of; 
neither was there more than one inhab- 
itant of the place who could have inter- 
preted a word of it. It was commonly 
believed, however, that one part of his 
devotions was invariably a prolonged 
petition for vengeance on Campbell of 
Glenlyon, the main instrument in the 
massacre of Glenco. 

He could have prayed in English, so 
that his grandson might have joined in 
his petitions, but such "an idea could 
never have presented itself. Under- 
standing both languages, he used that 
which was unintelligible to the lad, yet 
regarded himself as the party who had 


the right to resent the consequent schism. 
Such a conversation as now followed 
was no new thing after prayers. 

“ I could fery well wish, Malcolm, my ’ 
son,’’ said the old man, “tat you would 
be learnin’ to speak your own lan- 
cuach. It is all fery well for ta Sassen- 
ach {^Saxon, i. e., non-Celtic) podies to 
read ta Piple in English, for it will pe 
pleasing ta Almighty not to make tern 
cawpable of ta Gaelic, no more tan mon- 
keys ; but for all tat it’s not ta vord of 
God. Ta Gaelic is ta lancuach of ta car- 
den of Aiden, and no doubt but it pe ta 
lancuach in which ta Shepherd calls his 
sheep on ta everlastin’ hills. You see, 
Malcolm, it must be so, for how can 
a mortal man speak to his God in a7iy 
thing Gaelic ? When Mr. Graham — 
no, not Mr. Graham, ta coot man it was 
ta new minister — he speak an’ say to 
her; ‘Mr. MacPhail, you ought to say 
your prayers in Enclish,’ I was fery 
wrathful, and I answered and said : ‘ Mr. 
Downey, do you tare to suppose tat God 
doesn’t prefer ta Gaelic to ta Sassenach 
tongue ?’ — ‘ Mr. MacPhail,’ says he, ‘ it 
’ll pe for your poy I mean it. How’s ta 
lad to learn ta way of salfation if you 
speak to your God in his presence in a 
strange tongue ?’ So I was opedient to 
his vord, and ta next efening I tid kneel 
town in Sassenach and I tid try. But, 
ochone ! she wouldn’t go ; her tongue 
would be cleafing to ta roof of her 
mouth ; ta claymore would be sticking 
rusty in ta scabbard ; for her heart she 
was ashamed to speak to ta Hielan’- 
man’s Maker in ta Sassenach tongue. 
You must learn ta Gaelic, or you’ll not pe 
peing worthy to be peing her nain son, 
Malcolm.’’ 

“But, daddy, wha’s to learn me?’’ 
asked his grandson, gayly. 

“ Learn you, Malcolm ! Ta Gaelic is 
ta lancuach of Nature, and wants no 
learnin’. /nefer had any learnin’ ; yet 
I nefer haf to say to.myself, ‘What is it 
I would be saying?’ when I speak ta 
Gaelic ; put I always haf to set ta tead 
men — that is ta vords — on their feet, and 
put tern in pattle-array again, when I 
would pe speakin’ ta dull mechanic 
English. When I open my mouth to 


MALCOLM. 


23 


it, ta Gaelic comes like a spring of pure 
water, Malcolm. Ta plenty of it must 
run out. Try it now, Malcolm. Shust 
oppen your mouth in ta Gaelic shape, 
and see if ta Gaelic will not pe falling 
from it.” 

Seized with a merry fit, Malcolm did 
open his mouth in the Gaelic shape, and 
sent from it a strange gabble, imitative 
of the most frequently recurring sounds 
of his grandfather’s speech. 

‘‘ How will that do, daddy ?” he asked, 
after jabbering gibberish for the space 
of a minute. 

‘‘ It will not pe paad for a beginner, 
Malcolm. She cannot say it shust pe 
vorts, or tat tere pe much of ta sense in 
it ; but it pe fery like what ta pabes say 
pefore tey pekin to speak it properly. 
So it’s all fery well, and if you will only 
pe putting your mouth in ta Gaelic shape 
often enough, ta sounds will soon pe 
taking ta shape of it, and ta vorts will 
pe coming trough ta mists, and pefore 
you know you’ll pe peing a creat credit 
to your cranfather, my boy Malcolm.” 

A silence followed, for Malcolm’s at- 
tempt had not had the result he antici- 
pated : he had thought only to make 
his grandfather laugh. Presently the 
old man resumed, in the kindest voice : 

“Andtere’s another thing, Malcolm, 
tat’s much wanting to you : you’ll never 
pe a man — not to speak of a pard like 
your cranfather — if you’ll not pe learn- 
ing to play on ta bagpipes.” 

Malcolm, who had been leaning 
against the chimley-lug while his grand- 
father spoke, moved gently round be- 
hind his chair, reached out for the pipes 
where they lay in a corner at the old 
man’s side, and catching them up softly, 
put the mouthpiece to his lips, and with 
a few vigorous blasts filled the bag. 
Then out burst the double droning bass, 
and the youth’s fingers, clutching the 
chanter as by the throat, at once com- 
pelled its screeches into shape far better, 
at least, than his lips had been able to give 
the crude material of Gaelic. He played 
the only reel he knew, but that with full 
vigor and good effect. At the sound of 
the first of the notes of it, the old man 
sprung to his feet and began capering to 


the reel — partly in delight with the music, 
but far more in delight with the musician. 
Ever and anon, with feeble yell, he ut- 
tered the unspellable Hoogh of the High- 
lander, and jumped, as he thought, high 
in the air, though his failing limbs, alas ! 
lifted his feet scarce an inch from the 
floor. 

“Aigh! aigh!” he sighed at length, 
yielding the contest between his legs 
and the lungs of the lad — “aigh ! aigh ! 
she’ll die happy ! she’ll die happy ! 
Hear till her poy, how he makes ta 
pipes speak ta true Gaelic ! Ta pest 
o’ Gaelic, tat! Old Tuncan’s pipes ’ll 
not know how to be talking Sassenach. 
See to it ! See to it 1 He had put to 
blow in at ta one end, and out came ta 
reel at ta tother. Hoogh I hoogh ! Play 
us ta Righil Thulachan, Malcolm, my 
chief !” 

“ I kenna reel, strathspey, nor lilt, but 
jist that burd alane, daddy.” 

“ Give tern to me, my poy I” cried the 
old piper, reaching out a hand as eager 
to clutch the uncouth instrument as the 
miser’s to finger his gold : “ hear well to 
me as I play, an’ you’ll soon be able to 
play dance 'or coronach with the best 
piper petween Cape Wrath and ta Mull 
o’ Cantyre.” 

Duncan played tune after tune until 
his breath fkiled him, and an exhausted 
grunt of the drone in the middle of a 
coronach, followed by an abrupt pause, 
revealed the emptiness of both lungs and 
bag. Then first he remembered his ob- 
ject, forgotten the moment he began to 
play. 

“ Now, Malcolm,” he said, offering 
the pipes to his grandson, “ you play 
tat after me.” 

He had himself of course learned all 
by the ear, but could hardly have been 
serious in requesting Malcolm to follow 
him through such a succession of tortu- 
ous mazes. 

“ I haena a memory up to that, dad- 
dy ; but I s’ get a baud o’ Mr. Graham’s 
flute-music, and maybe that’ll help me a 
bit. — Wadna ye be takin’ hame Mistress 
Partan’s blackin’ ’at ye promised her ?” 

“ Surely, my son. She should always 
be keeping her promises.” 


24 


MALCOLM. 


He rose, and getting a small stone 
bottle and his stick from the corner 
between the projecting ingle-cheek and 
the window, left the house, to walk with 
unerring steps through the labyrinth of 
the village, threading his way from pas- 
sage to passage, avoiding pools and pro- 
jecting stones, not to say houses, and 
human beings who did not observe his 
approach. His eyes, or his whole face, 
appeared to possess an ethereal sense as 
of touch, for without the slightest con- 
tact in the ordinary sense of the word, 
he was aware of the neighborhood of 
material objects, as if through the pulsa- 
tions of some medium to others impercep- 
tible. He could, with perfect accuracy, 
tell the height of any wall or fence with- 
in a few feet of him ; could perceive at 
once whether it was high or low or half 
tide, by going out in front of the houses 
and turning his face, with its sightless 
eyeballs, toward the sea ; knew whether 
a woman who spoke to him had a child 
in her arms or not ; and, indeed, if she 
was about to be a mother, was believed 
to become at once aware of the fact. 

He was a strange figure to look upon 
in that lowland village, for he invariably 
wore the highland dress : in truth, he had 
never had a pair of trowsers on his legs, 
and was far from pleased that his grand- 
son clothed himself in such contempt- 
ible garments. But, contrasted with the 
showy style of his costume, there was 
something most pathethic in the blended 
pallor of hue into which the originally 
gorgeous colors of his kilt had faded — 
noticeable chiefly on week-days, when 
he wore no sporran ; for the kilt, en- 
countering, from its loose construction, 
comparatively little strain or friction, 
may reach an age unknown to the gar- 
ments of the low country, and, while 
perfectly decent, yet look ancient ex- 
ceedingly. On Sundays, however, he 
made the best of himself, and came out 
like a belated and aged butterfly, in his 
father’s sporran, or tasseled goatskin 
purse, in front of him, his grandfather’s 
dirk at his side, his great-grandfather’s 
skene-dhu, or little black-hafted knife, 
stuck in the stocking of his right leg, and 
a huge round brooch of brass — nearly 


half a foot in diameter, and, Mr. Gra- 
ham said, as old as the battle of Harlaw 
— on his left shoulder. In these adorn- 
ments he would walk proudly to church, 
leaning on the arm of his grandson. 

“ The piper’s gey [considerably) brok- 
ken-like the day,” said one of the fisher- 
men’s wives to a neighbor as the old 
man passed them, the fact being that he 
had not yet recovered from his second 
revel in the pipes so soon after the ex- 
haustion of his morning’s duty, and was, 
in consequence, more asthmatic than 
usual. 

“I doobt he’ll be slippin’ awa’ some 
cauld nicht,” said the other: “his leev- 
in’ breath ’s ill to get.” 

“Ay; he has to warstle for ’t, puir 
man ! Weel, he’ll be missed, the blin’ 
body ! It’s exterordinar hoo he’s man- 
aged to live, an’ bring up sic a fine lad 
as that Ma’colm o’ his.” 

“Weel, ye see. Providence has been 
kin’ till him as weel ’s ither blin’ craters. 
The toon’s pipin’ ’s no to be despised; 
an’ there’s the cryin’, an’ the chop, an’ 
the lamps. ’Deed he’s been an eident 
[diligent) crater — an’ for a blin’ man, 
as ye say, it’s jist exterordinar.” 

“ Div ye min’ whan first he cam’ to 
the toon, lass ?” 

“Ay; what wad hinner me min’in’ 
that ? It’s no sae lang.” 

“ Weel, Ma’colm, ’at’s sic a fine lad 
noo, they tell me wasna muckle big- 
ger nor a gey haddie” [tolerable had- 
dock). 

“ But the auld man was an auld man 
than, though nae doobt he’s unco failed 
sin syne.” 

“ A dochter’s bairn, they say, the lad.” 

“Ay, they say, but wha kens ? Dun- 
can could never be gotten to open his 
mou’ as to the father or mither o’ ’m, 
an’ sae it weel may be as they say. It’s 
nigh twenty year noo. I’m thinkin’, sin’ , 
he made ’s appearance, and ye wasna 
come frae Scaurnose at that time.” 

“Some fowk says the auld man’s 
name’s no MacPhail, and he maun hae 
come here in hidin’ for some rouch job 
or ither ’at he’s been mixed up wi’.” 

“ I s’ believe nae ill o’ sic a puir, 
hairmless body. Fowk ’at maks their 


MALCOLM. 25 


ain livin’, wantin’ thee een to guide them, 
canna be that far aff the straucht. Guid 
guide ’s ! we hae eneuch to answer for 
oor ainsels, ohn passed [without pass- 
ing) judgment upo’ ane anither.” 


“ I was but tellin’ ye what fowk telled 
me,” returned the younger woman. 

“Ay, ay, lass; I ken that, for I ker 
there was fowk to tell ye.” 


\ 



XX. 


CHAPTER VII. 

ALEXANDER GRAHAM. 

A S soon as his grandfather left the 
house, Malcolm went out also, clos- 
ing the door behind him, and turning 
the key, but leaving it in the lock. He 
ascended to the upper town — only, how- 
ever, to pass through its main street, at 
the top of which he turned and looked 
back for a few moments, apparently in 
contemplation. The descent to the shore 
was so sudden that he could see noth- 
ing of the harbor or of the village he 
had left — nothing but the blue bay and 
the filmy mountains of Sutherlandshire, 
molten by distance into cloudy ques- 
tions, and looking betwixt blue sea and 
blue sky, less substantial than either. 
After gazing for a moment, he turned 
again, and held on his way, through 
fields which no fence parted from the 
road. The morning was still glorious, 
the larks right jubilant, and the air filled 
with the sweet scents of cottage flowers. 
Across the fields came the occasional 
low of an ox, and the distant sounds of 
children at play. But Malcolm saw with- 
out noting, and heard without heeding, 
for his mind was full of speculation con- 
cerning the lovely girl, whose vision 
already appeared far off; — who might 
she be ? whence had she come ? whither 
could she have vanished ? That she did 
not belong to the neighborhood was cer- 
tain, he thought ; but there was a farm- 
house near the sea-town where they let 
lodgings ; and, although it was early in 
the season, she might belong to some 
family which had come to spend a few 
of the summer weeks there : possibly his 
appearance had prevented her from hav- 
ing her bath that morning. If he should 
have the good fortune to see her again, 
he would show her a place far fitter for 
the purpose — a perfect arbor of rocks, ut- 
terly secluded, with a floor of deep sand, 
and without a hole for crab or lobster. 

26 


His road led him in the direction of a 
few cottages lying in a hollow. Beside 
them rose a vision of trees, bordered by 
an ivy-grown wall, from amidst whose 
summits shot the spire of a church ; and 
from beyond the spire, through the trees, 
came golden glimmers as of vane and 
crescent and pinnacled ball, that hinted 
at some shadowy abode of enchantment 
within ; but as he . descended the slope 
toward the cottages the trees gradually 
rose and shut in everything. 

These cottages were far more ancient 
than the houses of the town, were cov- 
ered with green thatch, were buried in 
ivy, and would soon be radiant with 
roses and honeysuckles. They were 
gathered irregularly about a gate of 
curious old iron-work, opening on the 
churchyard, but more like an entrance 
to the grounds behind the church, for it 
told of ancient state, bearing on each of 
its pillars a great stone heron with a fish 
in its beak. 

This was the quarter whence had come 
the noises of children, but they had now 
ceased, or rather sunk into a gentle mur- 
mur, which oozed, like the sound of bees 
from a straw-covered beehive, out of a 
cottage rather larger than the rest, which 
stood close by the churchyard gate. It 
was the parish school, and these cottages 
were all that remained of the old town 
of Portlossie, which had at one time 
stretched in a long irregular street al- 
most to the shore. The town cross yet 
stood, but away solitary on a green hill 
that overlooked the sands. 

During the summer the long walk from 
the new town to the school and to the 
church was anything but a hardship : in 
winter it was otherwise, for then there 
were days in which few would venture 
the single mile that separated them. 

The door of the school, bisected longi- 
tudinally, had one of its halves open, 
and by it outflowed the gentle hum of 


MALCOLM. 


27 


the honey-bees of learning. Malcolm 
walked in, and had the whole of the 
busy scene at once before him. The 
place was like a barn, open from wall to 
wall, and from floor to rafters and thatch, 
browned with the peat smoke of vanish- 
ed winters. Two -thirds of the space 
were filled with long desks and forms ; 
the other had only the master’s desk, 
and thus afforded room for standing 
classes. At the present moment it was 
vacant, for the prayer was but just over, 
and the Bible-class had not been called 
up : there Alexander Graham, the school- 
master, descending from his desk, met 
and welcomed Malcolm with a kind shake 
of the hand. He was a man of middle 
height, but very thin; and about five 
and forty years of age, but looked older, 
because of his thin gray hair and a stoop 
in the shoulders. He was dressed in a 
shabby black tail-coat and clean white 
neck-cloth : the rest of his clothes were 
of parson gray, noticeably shabby also. 
The quiet sweetness of his smile and a 
composed look of submission were sug- 
gestive of the purification of sorrow, but 
were attributed by the townsfolk to dis- 
appointment ; for he was still but a school- 
master, whose aim they thought must be 
a pulpit and a parish. But Mr. Graham 
had been early released from such an 
ambition, if it had ever possessed him, 
and had for many years been more than 
content to give himself to the hopefuller 
work of training children for the true 
ends of life : he lived the quietest of 
studious lives, with an old housekeeper. 

Malcolm had been a favorite pupil, 
and the relation of master and scholar 
did not cease when the latter saw that 
he ought to do something to lighten the 
burden of his grandfather, and so left 
the school and betook himself to the 
life of a fisherman — ^with the slow leave 
of Duncan, who had set his heart on 
making a scholar of him, and would 
never, indeed, had Gaelic been amongst 
his studies, have been won by the most 
laborsome petition. He asserted him- 
self perfectly able to provide for both for 
ten years to come at least, in proof of 
which he roused the inhabitants of Port- 
lossie, during the space of a whole month. 


a full hour earlier than usual, with the 
most terrific blasts of the bagpipes, and 
this notwithstanding complaint and ex- 
postulation on all sides, so that at length 
the provost had to interfere ; after which 
outburst of defiance to time, however, 
his energy had begun to decay so visibly 
that Malcolm gave himself to the pipes 
in secret, that he might be ready, in case 
of sudden emergency, to take his grand- 
father’s place ; for Duncan lived in con- 
stant dread of the hour when his office 
might be taken from him and conferred 
on a mere drummer, or, still worse, on a 
certain ne’er-do-weel cousin of the pro- 
vost, so devoid of music as to be capable 
only of ringing a bell. 

“ I’ve had an invitation to Miss Camp- 
bell’s funeral — Miss Horn’s cousin, you 
know,” said Mr. Graham, in a hesitating 
and subdued voice : “could you manage 
to take the school for me, Malcolm ?” 

“ Yes, sir. There’s naething to hinner 
me. What day is ’t upo’ ?” 

“Saturday.” 

“Vera weel, sir. I s’ be here in guid 
time.” 

This matter settled, the business of the 
school, in which, as he did often, Mal- 
colm had come to assist, began. Only 
a pupil of his own could have worked 
with Mr. Graham, for his mode was very 
peculiar. But the strangest fact in it 
would have been the last to reveal itself 
to an ordinary observer. This was, that he 
rarely contradicted anything : he would 
call up the opposing truth, set it face to 
face with the error, and leave the two to 
fight it out. The human mind and con- 
science were, he said, the plains of Ar- 
mageddon, where the battle of good and 
evil was for ever raging ; and the one 
business of a teacher was to rouse and 
urge this battle by leading fresh forces 
of the truth into the field — forces com- 
posed as little as might be of the hireling 
troops of the intellect, and as much as 
possible of the native energies of the 
heart, imagination and conscience. In 
a word, he would oppose error only by 
teaching the truth. 

In early life he had come under the 
influence of the writings of William Law, 
which he read as one who pondered every 


28 


MALCOLM. 


doctrine in that light which only obedi- 
ence to the truth can open upon it. With 
a keen eye for the discovery of universal 
law in the individual fact, he read even 
the marvels of the New Testament prac- 
tically. Hence, in training his soldiers, 
every lesson he gave them was a missile ; 
every admonishment of youth or maiden 
was as the mounting of an armed cham- 
pion, and the launching of him with a 
Godspeed into the thick of the fight. 

He now called up the Bible-class, and 
Malcolm sat beside and listened. That 
morning they had to read one of the 
chapters in the history of Jacob. 

“Was Jacob a good man ?’’ he asked, 
as soon as the reading, each of the schol- 
ars in turn taking a verse, was over. 

An apparently universal expression of 
assent followed ; halting in its wake, 
however, came the voice of a boy near 
the bottom of the class : 

“Wasna he some dooble, sir?” 

“You are right, Sheltie,” said the mas- 
ter; “he was double. I must, I find, 
put the question in another shape : Was 
Jacob a bad man ?” 

Again came such a burst of yesses that 
it might have been taken for a general 
hiss. But limping in the rear came again 
the half-dissentient voice of Jamie Joss, 
whom the master had just addressed as 
Sheltie : 

“Pairtly, sir.” 

“You think, then, Sheltie, that a man 
may be both bad and good ?” 

“ I dinna ken, sir. I think he may be 
whiles ane an’ whiles the ither, an’ whiles 
maybe it wad be ill to say whilk. Oor 
collie’s whiles in twa min’s whether he’ll 
du what he’s telled or no.” 

“That’s the battle of Armageddon, 
Sheltie, my man. It’s aye ragin’, ohn 
gun roared or bagonet clashed. Ye 
maun up an’ do yer best in’t, my man. 
Gien ye dee fechtin’ like a man, ye’ll flee 
up wi’ a quaiet face an’ wi’ wide open een ; 
an’ there’s a great Ane ’at ’ll say to ye, 

‘ Weel dune, laddie !’ But gien ye gie 
in to the enemy, he’ll turn ye intill a 
creepin’ thing ’at eats dirt ; an’ there ’ll 
no be a hole in a’ the crystal wa’ o’ the 
New Jerusalem near eneuch to the grun’ 
to lat ye creep throu’.” 


As soon as ever Alexander Graham, 
the polished thinker and sweet-manner- 
ed gentleman, opened his mouth con- 
cerning the things he loved best, that 
moment the most poetic forms came 
pouring out in the most rugged speech. 

“I reckon, sir,” said Sheltie, “Jacob 
hadna fouchten oot his battle.” 

“ That’s jist it, my boy. And because 
he wouldna get up and fecht manfully, 
God had to tak him in han’. Ye’ve 
heard tell o’ generals, whan their troops 
war rinnin’ awa’, haein’ to cut this man 
doon, shute that ane, and lick anither, 
till he turned them a’ richt face aboot 
and drave them on to the foe like a spate ! 
And the trouble God took wi’ Jacob was 
na lost upon him at last.” 

“An’ what cam o’ Esau, sir?” asked a 
pale-faced maiden with blue eyes. “ He 
wasna an ill kin’ o’ a chield — was he, sir ?” 

“No, Mappy,” answered the master ; 
“he was a fine chield, as you say; but 
he nott [needed) mair time and» gentler 
treatment to mak onything o’ him. Ye 
see he had a guid hert, but was a duller 
kin’ o’ cratur a’thegither, and cared for 
naething he could na see or hanle. He 
never thoucht muckle about God at a’. 
Jacob was anither sort — a poet kin’ o’ a' 
man, but a sneck-drawin’ cratur for a’ 
that. It was easier, hooever, to get the 
slyness oot o’ Jacob, than the dullness 
oot o’ Esau. Punishment tellt upo’ Ja- 
cob like upon a thin - skinned horse, 
whauras Esau was mair like the minis- 
ter’s powny, that can hardly be made to 
unnerstan’ that ye want him to gang on. 
But o’ the ither han’, dullness is a thinsr 
than can be borne wi’ : there’s na hurry 
aboot that; but the deceitfu’ tricks o’ 
Jacob war na to be endured, and sae the 
tawse [leather strap) cam doon upo’ 
him." 

“An’ what for didna God mak Esau 
as clever as Jacob ?” asked a wizened- 
faced boy near the top of the class. 

“Ah, my Peery !” said Mr. Graham, 

“ I canna tell ye that. A’ that I can tell 
is, that God hadna dune makin’ at him, 
an’ some kin’ o’ fowk tak langer to mak 
oot than ithers. An’ ye canna tell what 
they’re to be till they’re made oot. But 
whether what I tell ye be richt or no 


MALCOLM, 


29 


God maun hae the verra best o’ rizzons ’ 
for ’t, ower-guid maybe for us to unner- 
stan’ — the best o’ rizzons for Esau him- 
seF, I mean, for the Creator luiks efter 
his cratur first ava’ {of all ). — And now,” 
concluded Mr. Graham, resuming his 
English, ‘‘go to your lessons; and be 
diligent, that God may think it worth 
while to get on faster with the making 
of you.” 

In a moment the class was dispersed 
and all were seated. In another, the 
sound of scuffling arose, and fists were 
seen storming across a desk. 

'' ‘‘Andre\^ Jamieson and Poochy, come 
up here,” said the master in a loud voice. 

'‘Me hittit me first,” cried Andrew, the 
moment they were within a respectful 
distance of the master, whereupon Mr. 
Graham turned to the other with inquiry 
in his eyes. 

‘‘He had nae business to ca’ me 
Poochy.” 

‘‘ No more he had ; but you had just 
as little right to punish him for it. The 
offence was against me : he had no right 
to use my name for you, and the quar- 
rel was mine. For the present you are 
Poochy no more : go to your place, Wil- 
liam Wilson.” 

The boy burst out sobbing, and crept 
back to his seat with his knuckles in his 
eyes> 

‘‘Andrew Jamieson,” the master went 
on, ‘‘ I had almost got a name for you, 
but you have sent it away. You are not 
ready for it yet, I see. Go to your place.” 

With downcast looks Andrew followed 
William, and the watchful eyes of the 
master saw that, instead of quarreling 
any more during the day, they seemed 
to catch at every opportunity of showing 
each other a kindness. 

Mr. Graham never used bodily pun- 
ishment : he ruled chiefly by the aid of 
a system of individual titles, of the min- 
gled characters of pet-name and nick- 
name. As soon as the individuality of 
a boy had attained to signs of blossom- 
ing — that is, had become such that he 
could predict not only an upright but a 
characteristic behavior in given circum- 
stances, he would take him aside and 
whisper in his ear that henceforth, so 


long as he deserved it, he would call him 
by a certain name — one generally derived 
from some object in the animal or veg- 
etable world, and pointing to a resem- 
blance which was not often patent to 
any eye but the master’s own. He had 
given the name of Poochy, for instance, 
to William Wilson, because, like the 
kangaroo, he sought his object in a suc- 
cession of awkward, yet not the less 
availing leaps — ^gulping his knowledge 
and pocketing his conquered marble 
after a like fashion. Mappy, the name 
which thus belonged to a certain flaxen- 
haired, soft-eyed girl, corresponds to the 
English bunny. Sheltie is the small 
Scotch mountain-pony, active and strong. 
Peery means pegtop. But not above a 
quarter of the children had pet-names. 
To gain one was to reach the highest 
honor of the school ; the withdrawal of 
it was the severest of punishments, and 
the restoring of it the sign of perfect 
reconciliation. The master permitted no 
one else to use it, and was seldom known 
to forget himself so far as to utter it while 
its owner was in disgrace. The hope of 
gaining such a name, or the fear of losing 
it, was in the pupil the strongest ally of 
the master, the most powerful enforce- 
ment of his influences. It was a scheme 
of government by aspiration. But it 
owed all its operative power to the cha- 
racter of the man who had adopted 
rather than invented it — for the scheme 
had been suggested by a certain passage 
in the book of the Revelation. 

Without having read a word of Swe- 
denborg, he was a believer in the abso- 
lute correspondence of the inward and 
outward ; and, thus long before the 
younger Darwin arose, had suspected a 
close relationship — remote identity, in- 
deed, in nature and history — ^between 
the animal and human worlds. But 
photographs from a good many different 
points would be necessary to afford any- 
thing like a complete notion of the cha- 
racter of this country schoolmaster. 

Toward noon, while he was busy with 
an astronomical class, explaining, by 
means partly of the blackboard, partly 
of two boys representing the relation of 
the earth and the moon, how it comes 


30 


MALCOLM. 


that we see but one half of the latter, 
the door gently opened and the troubled 
face of the mad laird peeped slowly in. 
His body followed as gently, and at last 
— sad symbol of his weight of care — his 
hump appeared, with a slow half-revolu- 
tion as he turned to shut the door behind 
him. Taking off his hat, he walked up 
to Mr. Graham, who, busy with his as- 
tronomy, had not perceived his entrance, 
touched him on the arm, and, standing 
on tip-toe, whispered softly in his ear, as 
if it were a painful secret that must be 
respected — 

“I dinna ken whaur I cam frae. I 
want to come to the school.” 

Mr. Graham turned and shook hands 
with him, respectfully addressing him as 
Mr. Stewart, and got down for him the 
arm-chair which stood behind his desk. 
But, with the politest bow, the laird de- 
clined it, and mournfully repeating the 
words, ” I dinna ken whaur I cam frae,” 
took a place readily yielded him in the 
astronomical circle surrounding the sym- 
bolic boys. 

This was not by any means his first 
appearance there ; for every now and 
then he was seized with a desire to go 
to school, plainly with the object of find- 
ing out where he came from. This 
always fell in his quieter times, and for 
days together he would attend regularly ; 
in one instance he was not absent an 
hour for a whole month. He spoke so 
little, however, that it was impossible to 
tell how much he understood, although 
he seemed to enjoy all that went on. 
He was so quiet, so sadly gentle, that he 
gave no trouble of any sort, and after 
the first few minutes of a fresh appear- 
ance, the attention of the scholars was 
rarely distracted by his presence. 

The way in which the master treated 
him awoke like respect in his pupils. 
Boys and girls were equally ready to 
make room for him on their forms, and 
any one of the latter who had by some 
kind attention awaked the watery glint 
of a smile on' the melancholy features 
of the troubled man, would boast of her 
success. Hence it carne that the neigh- 
borhood of Portlossie was the one spok 
in the county where a person of weak 


intellect or peculiar appearance might go 
about free of insult. 

The peculiar sentence the laird so often 
uttered was the only one he invariably 
spoke with definite clearness. In every 
other attempt at speech he was liable to 
be assailed by an often recurring impedi- 
ment, during the continuance of which 
he could compass but a word here and 
there, often betaking himself, in the 
agony of suppressed utterance, to the 
most extravagant gestures, with which 
he would sometimes succeed in so sup- 
plementing his words as to render his 
meaning intelligible. 

The two boys representing the earth 
and the moon had returned to their 
places in the class, and Mr. Graham had 
gone on to give a description of the 
moon, in which he had necessarily men- 
tioned the enormous height of her moun- 
tains as compared with those of the earth. 
But in the course of asking some ques- 
tions, he found a need of further expla- 
nation, and therefore once more required 
the services of the boy-sun and boy- 
moon. The moment the latter, however, 
began to describe his circle around the 
former, Mr. Stewart stepped gravely up 
to him, and, laying hold of his hand, led 
him back to his station in the class ; then, 
turning first one shoulder, then the other 
to the company, so as to attract atten- 
tion to his hump, uttered the single word 
Mountain, and took on himself the part 
of the moon, proceeding to revolve in 
the circle which represented her orbit. 
Several of the boys and girls smiled, but 
no one laughed, for Mr. Graham’s grav- 
ity maintained theirs. Without remark, 
he used the mad laird for a moon to the 
end of his explanation. 

Mr. Stewart remained in the school 
all the morning, stood up with every 
class Mr. Graham taught, and in the in- 
tervals sat, with book or slate before him. 
still as a Brahman on the fancied verge 
of his re-absorption, save that he mur- 
mured to himself now and then — 

‘‘ I dinna ken whaur I cam frae.” 

When his pupils dispersed for dinner, 
Mr. Graham invited him to go to his 
house and share his homely meal, but 
with polished gesture and broken speech, 


MALCOLM. 


Mr. Stewart declined, walked away to- 
ward the town, and was seen no more 
that afternoon. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SWIVEL. 

Mrs. Courthope, the housekeeper at 
Lossie House, was a good woman, who 
did not stand upon her dignities, as small 
rulers are apt to do, but cultivated friend- 
ly relations with the people of the Sea 
Town. Some of the rougher of the wo- 
men despised the sweet outlandish speech 
she had brought with her from her native 
England, and accused her of mim-moti d- 
ness, or an affected modesty in the use of 
words ; but not the less was she in their 
eyes a great lady — whence indeed came 
the special pleasure in finding flaws in 
her — for to them she was the representa- 
tive of the noble family on whose skirts 
they and their ancestors had been settled 
for ages, the last marquis not having vis- 
ited the place for many years, and the 
present having but lately succeeded. 

Duncan MacPhail was a favorite with 
her ; for the English woman will gener- 
ally prefer the highland to the lowland 
Scotsman; and she seldom visited the 
Seaton without looking in upon him ; so 
that when Malcolm returned from the 
Alton, or Old Town, where the school 
was, it did not in the least surprise him 
to find her seated with his grandfather. 
Apparently, however, there had been 
some dissension between them, for the 
old man sat in his corner strangely wrath- 
ful, his face in a glow, his head thrown 
back, his nostrils distended, and his eye- 
lids working, as if his eyes were “poor 
dumb mouths,” like Caesar’s wounds, 
trying to speak. 

“We are told in the New Testament 
to forgive our enemies, you know,” said 
Mrs. Courthope, heedless of his entrance, 
but in a voice that seemed rather to plead 
than oppose. 

“ Inteet she will not be false to her 
shief and her clan,’’ retorted Duncan 
persistently. “ She will not forgife Caw- 
mil of Glenlyon.” 

“But he’s dead long since, and we 


31 

may at least hope he repented and was 
forgiven.” 

“She’ll be hoping nothing of the kind. 
Mistress Kertope,” replied Duncan. “ But 
if, as you say, God will be forgifing him — 
which 1 do not belief — let that pe enough 
for ta greedy blackguard. Sure, it mat- 
ters but small whether poor Duncan Mac- 
Phail will be forgifing him or not. Any- 
how, he must do without it, for he shall 
not haf it. He is a tamn fillain and 
scounrel, and so she says, with her re- 
specs to you, Mistress Kertope.” 

His sightless eyes flashed with indig- 
nation ; and perceiving it was time to 
change the subject, the housekeeper 
turned to Malcolm. 

“Could you bring me a nice mackerel 
or whiting for my lord’s breakfast to- 
morrow morning, Malcolm ?” she said. 

“Certaintly, mem. I s’ be wi’ ye in 
guid time wi’ the best the sea ’ll gie me,” 
he answered. 

“If I have the fish by nine o’clock, 
that will be early enough,” she returned. 

“ I wad na like to wait sae lang for 
7ny brakfast,” remarked Malcolm. 

“You wouldn’t mind it much, if you 
waited asleep,” said Mrs. Courthope. 

“Can onybody sleep dll sic a tjme o’ 
day as that?” exclaimed the youth. 

“You must remember my lord doesn’t 
go to bed for hours after you, Malcolm.” 

“An’ what can keep him up a’ that 
time ? It’s no as gien he war efter the 
herrin’, an’ had the win’ an’ the watter 
an’ the netfu’s o’ waumlin’ craturs to 
haud him waukin’.” 

“ Oh ! he reads and writes, and some- 
times goes walking about the grounds 
after everybody else is in bed,” said Mrs. 
Courthope — ^“he and his dog.” 

“Weel, I wad raitherbe up ear’,” said 
Malcolm — ^“a heap raither. I like fine 
to be oot i’ the quaiet o’ the mornin’ afore 
the sun’s up to set the din gaun ; whan 
it’s a’ clear but no bricht — like the back 
o’ a bonny sawmon ; an’ air an’ watter 
an’ a’ luiks as gien they war waitin’ for 
something — quaiet, verra quaiet, but no 
content.” 

Malcolm uttered this long speech, and 
went on with more like it, in the hope 
of affording time for the stormy waters of 


32 


MALCOLM. 


Duncan’s spirit to assuage. Nor was he 
disappointed ; for, if there was a sound 
on the earth Duncan loved to hear, it 
was the voice of his boy; and by de- 
grees the tempest sank to repose, the 
gathered glooms melted from his coun- 
tenance, and the sunlight of a smile 
broke out. 

" Hear to him !” he cried. “ Her poy 
will pe a creat pard som tay, and sing 
pefore ta Stuart kings, when they come 
pack to Holyrood !” 

Mrs. Courthope had enough of poetry 
in her to be pleased with Malcolm’s 
quiet enthusiasm, and spoke a kind word 
of sympathy with the old man’s delight 
as she rose to take her leave. Duncan 
rose also, and followed her to the door, 
making her a courtly bow, and that just 
as she turned away. 

“ It ’ll pe a coot ’oman. Mistress Kert- 
ope,” he said as he came back; “and 
it ’ll not pe to plame her for forgifing 
Glenlyon, for he did not kill her creat- 
crandmother. Put it’ll pe fery paad 
preeding to request her nainsel, Tuncan 
MacPhail, to be forgifing ta rascal. 
Only she’ll pe put a voman, and it’ll not 
pe knowing no petter to her. — You’ll be 
mindipg you’ll be firing ta cun at six 
o’clock exackly, Malcolm, for all she 
says ; for my lord, peing put shust come 
home to his property, it might pe a fex 
to him if tere was any mistake so soon. 
Put inteed, I vonder he hasn’t been send- 
ing for old Tuncan to be gifing him a 
song or two on ta peeps ; for he’ll pe 
hafing ta oceans of fery coot highland 
plood in his own feins ; and his friend, 
ta Prince of Wales, who has no more 
rights to it than a maackerel fish, will pe 
wearing ta kilts at Holyrood. So mind 
you pe firing ta cun at six, my son.’’ 

For some years, young as he was, 
Malcolm had hired himself to one or 
other of the boat-proprietors of the Sea- 
ton or of Scaurnose, for the herring-fish- 
ing — only, however, in the immediate 
neighborhood, refusing to go to the west- 
ern islands, or any station whence he 
could not return to sleep at his grand- 
father’s cottage. He had thus on every 
occasion earned enough to provide for 
the following winter, so that his grand- 


father’s little income as piper, and other 
small returns, were accumulating in va- 
rious concealments about the cottage ; 
for, in his care for the future, Duncan 
dreaded lest Malcolm should buy things 
for him without which, in his own sight- 
less judgment, he could do well enough. 

Until the herring-season should ar- 
rive, however, Malcolm made a little 
money by line-fishing ; for he had bar- 
gained, the year before, with the captain 
of a schooner for an old ship’s-boat, and 
had patched and caulked it into a suf- 
ficiently serviceable condition. He sold 
his fish in the town and immediate neigh- 
borhood, where a good many housekeep- 
ers favored the handsome and cheery 
young fisherman. 

He would now be often out in the bay 
long before it was time to call his grand- 
father, in his turn to rouse the sleepers 
of Portlossie. But the old man had as 
yet always waked about the right time, 
and the inhabitants had never had any 
ground of complaint — a few minutes one 
way or the other being of little conse- 
quence. He was the cock which woke 
the whole yard : morning after morning 
his pipes went crowing through the streets 
of the upper region, his music ending 
always with his round. But after the 
institution of the gun-signal, his custom 
was to go on playing where he stood 
until he heard it, or to stop short in the 
midst of his round and his liveliest re- 
veille the moment it reached his ear. 
Loath as he might be to give over, that 
sense of good manners which was su- 
preme in every highlander of the old 
time, interdicted the fingering of a note 
after the marquis’s gun had called 
aloud. 

When Malcolm meant to go fishing, 
he always loaded the swivel the night 
before, and about sunset the same even- 
ing he set out for that purpose. Not a 
creature was visible on the border of the 
curving bay except a few boys far off on 
the gleaming sands whence the tide had 
just receded: they were digging for 
sand-eels — lovely little silvery fishes — 
which, as every now and then the spade 
turned one or two up, they threw into a 
tin pail for bait. But on the summit of 


MALCOLM. 


the long sandhill, the lonely figure of a 
man was walking to and fro in the level 
light of the rosy west ; and as Malcolm 
climbed the near end of the dune, it was 
turning far off at the other : half-way 
between them was the embrasure with 
the brass swivel, and there they met. 

Although he had never seen him be- 
fore, Malcolm perceived at once it must 
be Lord Lossie, and lifted his bonnet. 
The marquis nodded and passed on, but 
the next moment, hearing the noise of 
Malcolm’s proceedings with the swivel, 
turned and said — 

“What are you about there with that 
gun, my lad ?’’ 

“ I’m jist ga’in’ to dicht her oot an’ lod 
her, my lord,’’ answered Malcolm. 

“And what next? You’re not going 
to fire the thing ?’’ 

“Ay — the morn’s mornin’, my lord.’’ 

“ What will that be for ?’’ 

“Ow, jist to wauk yer lordship.’’ 

“Hm!’’ said his lordship, with more 
expression than articulation. 

“Will I no lod her?’’ asked Malcolm, 
throwing down the ramrod, and ap- 
proaching the swivel, as if to turn the 
muzzle of it again into the embrasure. 

“ Oh, yes ! load her by all means. I 
don’t want to interfere with any of your 
customs. But if that is your object, the 
means, I fear, are inadequate.’’ 

“ It’s a comfort to hear that, my lord ; 
for I canna aye be sure o’ my auld watch, 
an’ may weel be oot a five minutes or 
twa whiles. Sae, in future, seein’ it’s o’ 
sic sma’ consequence to yer lordship, I 
s’ jist lat her aff whan it’s convenient. 
A feow minutes winna maitter muckle t» 
the baillie-bodies.’’ 

There was something in Malcolm’s ad- 
dress that pleased Lord Lossie — the ming- 
ling of respect and humor, probably — 
the frankness and composure, perhaps. 
He was not self-conscious enough to be 
shy, and was so free from design of any 
sort that he doubted the good will of no 
one. 

“What’s your name ?’’ asked the mar- 
quis abruptly. 

“Malcolm MacPhail, my lord.’’ 

“MacPhail? I heard the name this 
very day ! Let me see.’’ 

3 


33 

“ My gran’father’s the blin’ piper, my 
lord.’’ 

“Yes, yes. Tell him I shall want him 
at the House. I left my own piper at 
Ceanglas.’’ 

“ I’ll fess him wi’ me the morn, gien 
ye like, my lord, for I’ll be ower wi’ some 
fine troot or ither, gien I haena the waur 
luck, the morn’s mornin’ ; Mistress Court- 
hope says she’ll be aye ready for ane to 
fry to yer lordship’s brakfast. But I’m 
thinkin’ that’ll be ower ear’ for ye to see 
him.’’ 

“ I’ll send for him when I want him. 
Go on with your brazen serpent there, 
only mind you don’t give her too much 
supper.’’ 

“Jist luik at her ribs, my lord! she 
winna rive !’’ was the youth’s response ; 
and the marquis was moving off with a 
smile, when Malcolm called after him. 

“ Gien yer lordship likes to see yer ain 
ferlies, I ken whaur some o’ them lie,’’ 
he said. 

“What do you mean by ferlies?" ask- 
ed the marquis. 

“Owl keeriosities, ye ken. For en- 
stance, there’s some queer caves alang 
the cost — twa or three o’ them afore ye 
come to the Scaurnose. They say the 
water bude till ha’ howkit them ance 
upon a time, and they maun hae been fu’ 
o’ partans, an’ lobsters, an’ their frien’s 
an’ neebors ; but they’re heigh an’ dreigh 
noo, as the fule said o’ his minister, an’ 
naething intill them but foumarts, an’ 
otters, an’ sic like.’’ 

“Well, well, my lad, we’ll see,’’ said 
his lordship kindly ; and turning once 
more, he resumed his walk. 

“ At yer lordship’s will,’’ answered Mal- 
colm in a low voice, as he lifted his bon- 
net and again bent to the swivel. 

The next morning, he was rowing 
slowly along in the bay, when he was 
startled by the sound of his grandfather’s 
pipes, wafted clear and shrill on a breath 
of southern wind, from the top of the 
town. He looked at his watch : it was 
not yet five o’clock. The expectation 
of a summons to play at Lossie House, 
had so excited the old man’s brain that 
he had waked long before his usual time, 
and Portlossie must wake also. The 


34 


MALCOLM. 


worst of it was, that he had already, as 
Malcolm knew from the direction of the 
sound, almost reached the end of his 
beat, and must even now be expecting 
the report of the swivel, until he heard 
which he would not cease playing, so 
long as there was a breath in his body. 
Pulling, therefore, with all his might, 
Malcolm soon ran his boat ashore, and 
in another instant the sharp yell of the 
swivel rang among the rocks of the 
promontory. He was still standing, lap- 
ped in a light reverie as he watched the 
smoke flying seaward, when a voice, 
already well known to him, said, close 
at his side : 

“What are you about with that horrid 
cannon ?” 

Malcolm started. 

“Ye garred me loup, my leddy!” he 
returned with a smile and an obeisance. 

“You told me," the girl went on em- 
phatically, and as she spoke she disen- 
gaged her watch from her girdle, “ that 
you fired it at six o’clock. It is not 
nearly six.” 

“ Didna ye hear the pipes, my leddy ?” 
he rejoined. 

“Yes, well enough ; but a whole regi- 
ment of pipes can’t make it six o’clock 
when my watch says ten minutes past 
five." 

“Eh, sic a braw watch !’’ exclaimed 
Malcolm. “What’s a’ thae bonny white 
k-nots aboot the face o’ ’t ?" 

“ Pearls," she answered, in a tone that 
implied pity of his ignorance. 

“Jist look at it aside mine!" he ex-, 
claimed in admiration, pulling out his 
great old turnip. 

“There!” cried the girl; “your own 
watch says only a quarter past five." 

“Ow, ay! my leddy; I set it by the 
toon clock ’at hings i’ the window o’ the 
Lossie Airms last nicht. But I maun awa’ 
an’ luik efter my lines, or atween the 
deil an’ the dogfish, my lord ’ll fare ill." 

“You haven’t told me why you fired 
the gun," she persisted. 

Thus compelled, Malcolm had to ex- 
plain that the motive lay in his anxiety 
lest his grandfather should over-exert 
himself, seeing he was subject to severe 
attacks of asthma. 


I “He could stop when he was tired,” 
she objected. 

“Ay, gien his pride wad lat him,” an- 
swered Malcolm, and turned away again, 
eager to draw his line. 

“ Have you a boat of your own ?’’ ask- 
ed the lady. 

“Ay; yon’s her, doon on the shore 
yonner. Wad ye like a row ? She’s 
fine an’ quaiet." 

“Who? The boat?" 

“The sea, my leddy." 

“ Is your boat clean ?’’ 

“ O’ a’thing but fish. But na, it’s no 
fit for sic a bonny goon as that. I win- 
na lat ye gang the day, my leddy ; but 
gien ye like to be here the morn’s morn- 
in’, I s’ be here at this same hoor, an’ 
hae my boat as clean’s a Sunday sark.” 

“You think more of my gown than of 
myself," she returned. 

“There’s no fear o’ yersel’, my leddy. 
Ye’re ower weel made to blaud [spoil). 
But wae’s me for the goon or [before) it 
had been an hoor i’ the boat the day ! — 
no to mention the fish cornin’ wallopin’ 
ower the gunnel ane efter the ither. But 
’deed I rnaujt say good-mornin’, mem !" 

“By all means. I don’t want to keep 
you a moment from your precious fish." 

Feeling rebuked, without well know- 
ing why, Malcolm accepted the dismissal, 
and ran to his boat. By the time he had 
taken his oars, the girl had vanished. 

His line was a short one ; but twice the 
number of fish he wanted were already 
hanging from the hooks. It was still 
very early when he reached the harbor. 
At home he found his grandfather wait- 
ing for him, and his breakfast ready. 

It was hard to convince Duncan that 
he had waked the royal burgh a whole 
hour too soon. He insisted that, as he 
had never made such a blunder before, 
he could not have made it now. 

“ It’s ta watch ’at ’ll pe telling ta lies, 
Malcolm, my poy,” he said thoughtfully. 
“She was once pefore.” 

“ But the sun says the same ’s the watch, 
daddy,” persisted Malcolm. 

Duiican understood the position of the 
sun and what it signified, as well as the 
clearest-eyed man in Port Lossie, but he 
could not afford to yield. 


t 


MALCOLM. 


35 


“ It was peing some conspeeracy of ta 
cursit Cawmills, to make her loss her 
poor pension,” he said. “ Put never you 
mind, Malcolm ; I’ll pe making up for 
ta plunder ta morrow mornin’. Ta coot 
peoples shall haf teir sleeps a whole hour 
after tey ought .to be at teir works.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE SALMON-TROUT. 

Malcolm walked up through the town 
with his fish, hoping to part with some 
of the less desirable of them, and so 
lighten his basket before entering the 
grounds of Lossie House. But he had 
met with little success, and was now ap- 
proaching the town-gate, as they called 
it, which closed a short street at right 
angles to the principal one, when he 
came upon Mrs. Catanach — on her 
knees, cleaning her doorstep. 

‘‘Weel, Ma’colm, what fish hae ye?” 
she said, without looking up. 

‘‘Hoo kent ye it was me. Mistress 
Catanach ?” asked the lad. 

” Kent it was you ?” she repeated. 
” Gien there be but twa feet at ance in 
ony street o’ Portlossie, I’ll tell ye whase 
heid’s abune them, an’ my een steekit 
[closeciy" 

” Hoot ! ye’re a witch. Mistress Cata- 
nach !” said Malcolm merrily. 

‘‘That’s as may be,” she returned, 
rising, and nodding mysteriously ; ‘‘I 
hae tauld ye nae mair nor the trowth. 
But what garred ye whup’s a’ oot o’ oor 
nakit beds by five o’clock i’ the mornin’, 
this mornin’, man ? That’s no what 
ye’re paid for.” 

‘‘’Deed, mem, it was jist a mistak’ o’ 
my puir daddy’s. He had been feart o’ 
sleepin’ ower lang, ye see, an’ sae had 
waukit ower sune. I was oot efter the 
fish, myseP.” 

‘‘But ye fired the gun ’gen the chap 
[before the stroke') o’ five.” 

‘‘ Ow, ay ! I fired the gun. The puir 
man wad hae bursten himsel’ gien I 
hadna.” 

■ ‘‘Deil gien he hed bursten himsel’ — 
the auld heelan’ shdlt !” exclaimed Mrs. 
Catanach spitefully. 


‘‘Ye sanna even sic words to my gran’- 
father, Mrs. Catanach,” said Malcolm 
with rebuke. 

She laughed a strange laugh. 

"Satina !" she repeated contemptu- 
ously. ‘‘An’ wha ’s your gran’father, 
that I sud tak tent [heed) hoo I wag my 
tongue ower his richteousness ?’” 

Then, with a sudden change of her 
tone to one of would-be friendliness — 

“ But what’ll ye be seekin’ for that bit 
sawmon trooty, man ?” she said. 

As she spoke she approached his bas- 
ket, and would have taken the fishdn 
her hands, but Malcolm involuntarily 
drew back. 

‘‘ It’s gauin’ to the Hoose to my lord’s 
brakfast,” he said. 

‘‘ Hoots ! ye’ll jist lea’ the troot wi’ 
me.^ — Ye’ll be seekin’ a saxpence for ’t, 

I reckon,” she persisted, again approach- 
ing the basket. 

‘‘ I tell ye. Mistress Catanach,” said 
Malcolm, drawing back now in the fear 
that if she once had it she would not 
yield it again, ‘‘it’s gauin’ up to the 
Hoose!” 

‘‘Toots ! there’s naebody there seen ’t • 
yet. It’s new oot o’ the watter.” 

‘‘But Mistress Courthope was doon 
last nicht, an’ wantit the best I could 
heuk.” 

” Mistress Courthope 1 Wha cares for 
her? A mim, cantin’ auld body! Gie 
me the trootie, Ma’colm. Ye’re a bonny ' 
laad, an’ it s’ be the better for ye.” 

“’Deed I cudna du ’t. Mistress Cata- 
nach — though I’m sorry to disobleege 
ye. It’s bespoken, ye see. But there’s 
a fine haddie, an’ a bonny sma’ coddie, 
an’ a goukmey [gray gurnard)." 

‘‘Gae ’wa’ wi’ yer baddies, an’ yergouk- 
meys ! Ye sanna gowk me wi’ them.” 

‘‘Weel, I wadna wonner,” said Mal- 
colm, “gien Mrs. Courthope wad like 
the haddie tu, an’ maybe the lave o’ 
them as weel. Hers is a muckle faimily 
to baud eatin’. I’ll jist gang to the 
Hoose first afore I mak ony mair offers 
frae my creel.” 

“Ye’ll lea’ the troot wi’ mef said Mrs. 
Catanach imperiously. 

“ Na ; I canna du that. Ye maun see 
yersel’ ’at I canna !” 


36 


MALCOLM. 


The woman’s face grew dark with 
anger. 

‘‘It s’ be the waur for ye,” she cried. 

‘‘ I’m no gauin’ to be fleyt [frightened) 
at ye. Ye’re no sic a witch as that comes 
till, though ye div ken a body’s fit upo’ 
the flags ! My blin’ luckie-deddy can 
du mair nor that!” said Malcolm, irri- 
tated by her persistency, threats and evil 
looks. 

‘‘Daur ye me?" she returned, her 
pasty cheeks now red as fire, and her 
wicked eyes flashing as she shook her 
' clenched fist at him. 

‘‘What for no?” he answered coolly, 
turning his head back over his shoulder, 
for he was already on his way to the 
gate. 

‘‘Ye s’ ken that, ye misbegotten fun- 
lin’ 1” shrieked the woman, and waddled 
hastily into the house. 

‘‘What ails her?” said Malcolm to 
himself. ‘‘ She micht ha’ seen’ ’at I bude 
to gie Mrs. Courthope the first offer.” 

By a winding carriage-drive, through 
trees whose growth was stunted by the 
sea-winds, which had cut off their tops 
as with a keen razor, Malcolm made a 
slow descent, yet was soon shadowed by 
timber of a more prosperous growth, 
rising as from a lake of the loveliest 
green, spangled with starry daisies. The 
air was full of sweet odors uplifted with 
the ascending dew, and trembled with a 
hundred songs at once, for here was a 
very paradise for birds. At length he 
came in sight of a long low wing of the 
House, and went to the door that led to 
the kitchen. There a maid informed 
him that Mrs. Courthope was in the hall, 
and he had better take his basket there, 
for she wanted to see him. He obeyed, 
and sought the main entrance. 

The house was an ancient pile, mainly 
of two sides at right angles, but with 
many gables, mostly having corbel-steps 
— a genuine old Scottish dwelling, small- 
windowed and gray, with steep slated 
roofs, and many turrets, each with a 
conical top. Some of these turrets rose 
from the ground, encasing spiral stone 
stairs ; others were but bartizans, their in- 
teriors forming recesses in rooms. They 
gave the house something of the air of 


a French chateau, only it looked stronger 
and far grimmer. Carved around some 
of the windows, in ancient characters, 
were Scripture texts and antique proverbs. 
Two time-worn specimens of heraldic 
zoology, in a state of fearful and ever- 
lasting excitement, stood rampant and 
gaping, one on each side of the hall- 
door, contrasting strangely with the re- 
pose of the ancient house, which looked 
very like what the oldest part of it was 
said to have been — a monastery. It had 
at the same time, however, a somewhat 
warlike expression, wherein consisting 
it would have been difficult to say ; nor 
could it eVer have been capable of much 
defence, although its position in that re- 
gard was splendid. In front was a great 
gravel-space, in the centre of which lay 
a huge block of serpentine, from a quar- 
ry on the estate, filling the office of goal, 
being the pivot, as it were, around which 
all carriages turned. 

On one side of the house was a great 
stone bridge, of lofty span, stretching 
across a little glen, in which ran a brown 
stream spotted with foam — the same that 
entered the frith beside the Seaton ; not 
muddy, however, for though dark it was 
clear — its brown being a rich transpa- 
rent hue, almost red, gathered from the 
peat-bogs of the great moorland hill be- 
hind. Only a very narrow terrace-walk, 
with battlemented parapet, lay between 
the back of the house and a precipitous 
descent of a' hundred feet to this rivulet. 
Up its banks, lovely with flowers and 
rich with shrubs and trees below, you 
might ascend until by slow gradations 
you left the woods and all culture be- 
hind, and found yourself, though still 
within the precincts of Lossie House, on 
the lonely side of the waste hill, a thou- 
sand feet above the sea. 

The hall-door stood open, and just 
within hovered Mrs. Courthope, dusting 
certain precious things not to be handled 
by a housemaid. This portion of the 
building was so narrow that the hall oc- 
cupied its entire width, and on the op- 
posite side of it another door, standing 
also open, gave a glimpse of the glen. 

‘‘Good-morning, Malcolm,” said Mrs. 
Courthope, when she turned and saw 


MALCOLM. 


whose shadow fell on the marble floor. 
"What have you brought me ?’’ 

"A fine salmon-troot, mem. But gien 
ye had hard hoo Mistress Catanach flytit 
{scolded) at me ’cause I wadna gie ’t to 
her! You wad hae thocht, mem, she 
was something no canny — the w’y ’at 
she first beggit, an’ syne fleecht [ flatter- 
ed), an syne a’ but banned an’ swore.’’ 

“She’s a peculiar person, that, Mal- 
colm. Those are nice whitings. I don’t 
care about the trout. Just take it to her 
as you go back.’’ 

" I doobt gien she’ll take it, mem. 
She’s an awfu’ vengefu’ cratur, fowk 
says.’’ 

"You remind me, Malcolm,’’ returned 
Mrs. Courthope, “that I am not at ease 
about your grandfather. He is not in a 
Christian frame of mind at all — and he 
is an old man too. If we don’t forgive 
our enemies, you know, the Bible plainly 
tells us we shall not be forgiven our- 
selves.’’ 

“ I’m thinkin’ it was a greater nor the 
Bible said that, mem,’’ returned Mal- 
colm, who was an apt pupil of Mr. Gra- 
ham. "But ye’ll be meaning Cammill 
o’ Glenlyon,’’ he went on with a smile. 
“ It canna maitter muckle to him wheth- 
er my gran’father forgie him or no, see- 
in’ he’s been deid this hunner year.’’ 

"It’s not Campbell of Glenlyon, it’s 
your grandfather I am anxious about,’’ 
said Mrs. Courthope. "Nor is it only 
Campbell of Glenlyon he’s so fierce 
against, but all his posterity as well.’’ 

"They dinna exist, mem. There’s no 
sic a bein’ o’ the face o’ the yearth, as a 
descendant o’ that Glenlyon.’’ 

"It makes little difference, I fear,’’ 
said Mrs. Courthope, who was no bad 
logician. "The question isn’t whether 
or not there’s anybody to forgive, but 
whether Duncan MacPhail is willing to 
forgive.’’ 

" That I do believe he is, mem ; though 
he wad be as sair astonished to hear ’t 
as ye are yersel’.’’ 

" I don’t know what you mean by that, 
Malcolm.’’ 

"I mean, mem, ’at a blin’ man, like 
my gran’father, canna ken himsel’ richt, 
seein’ he canna ken ither fowk richt. 


37 

It’s by kennin’ ither fowk ’at ye come to 
ken yersel’, mem — isna ’t noo ?’’ 

“ Blindness surely doesn’t prevent a 
man from knowing other people. He 
hears them, and he feels them, and in- 
deed has generally more kindness from 
them because of his affliction.’’ 

"Frae some o’ them, mem ; but it’s lit- 
tle kin ’ness my gran’father has expairi- 
enced frae Cammill o’ Glenlyon, mem.’’ 

"And just as little injury, I should 
suppose,’’ said Mrs. Courthope. 

"Ye’re wrang there, mem : a murder- 
ed mither maun be an unco skaith to 
oye’s oye [grandson' s grandson). But 
supposin’ ye to be richt, what I say ’s to 
the pint for a’ that. I maun jist explain 
a wee. — ^Whan I was a laddie at the 
schule, I was ance tell’t that ane o’ the 
loons was i’ the wye o’ mockin’ my 
gran’father. When I hard it, I thocht I 
cud just rive the hert oot o’ ’m, an’ set 
my teeth in ’t, as the Dutch sodger did 
to the Spaniard. But whan I got a grip 
o’ ’im, an’ the rascal turned up a frichtit 
kin’ o’ a dog-like face to me, I jist could 
7iot drive my steiket neive [cle7iched flst) 
intil’t. Mem, a face is an awfu’ thing ! 
There’s aye something luikin’ oot o’ ’t 
’at ye canna do as ye like wi’. But my 
gran’father never saw a face in ’s life — 
lat alane Glenlyon’s ’at’s been dirt for sae 
mony a year. Gien he war luikin’ intil 
the face o’ that Glenlyon even, I do be- 
lieve he would no more drive his durk 
intill him — ’’ 

" Drive his dirk into him !’’ echoed 
Mrs. Courthope, in horror at the very 
disclaimer. 

"No, I’m sure he wad «<?/,’’ persisted 
Malcolm, innocently. " He micht not 
tak him oot o’ a pot [hole in a 7'iver-bed'), 
but he wad neither durk him nor fling 
him in. I’m no that sure he wadna 
even rax [reach) him a han’. Ae thing 
I a77t certain o’ — that by the time he 
meets Glenlyon in haven, he’ll be no 
that far frae lattin’ by - ganes be by- 
ganes.’’ 

"Meets Gleplyon in heaven!’’ again 
echoed Mrs. Courthope, who knew 
enough of the story to be startled at the 
taken-for-granted way in which Mal- 
colm spoke. "Is it probable that a 


38 


MALCOLM. 


wretch such as your legends describe 
him should ever get there ?” 

“Ye dinna think God’s forgien him, 
than, mem ?’’ 

“I have no right to judge Glenlyon, 
or any other man ; but as you ask me, 1 
must say I see no likelihood of it.” 

.“Hoo can ye compleen o’ my puir 
blin’ grandfather for no forgiein’ him, 
than ? — I hae ye there, mem !” 

“ He may have repented, you know,” 
said Mrs. Courthope feebly, finding her- 
self in less room than was comfortable. 

“In sic case,” returned Malcolm, “the 
auld man ’ll hear a’ aboot it the meenit 
he wins there ; an’ I mak nae doobt he’ll 
du his best to perswaud himfeel’.” 

“ But what if he shouldn’t get there ?” 
persisted Mrs. Courthope, in pure benev- 
olence. 

“ Hoot toot, mem ! I wonner to hear 
ye ! A Cammill latten in, and my gran’- 
father hauden oot! That wad be jist 
yallow-faced Willie ower again !* Na, 
na ; things gang anither gait up there. 
My gran’father’s a rale guid man, for a’ 
’at he has a wye o’ luikin’ at things ’at’s 
mair efter the law nor the gospel.” 

Apparently, Mrs. Courthope had come 
at length to the conclusion that Malcolm 
was as much of a heathen as his grand- 
father, for in silence she chose her fish, 
in silence paid him his price, and then 
with only a sad Good-day, turned and 
left him. 

He would have gone back by the river- 
side to the sea-gate, but Mrs. Courthope 
having waived her right to the fish in 
favor of Mrs. Catanach, he felt bound to 
give her another chance, and so returned 
the way he had come. 

“ Here’s yer troot, Mistress Cat’nach,” 
he called aloud at her door, which gen- 
erally stood a little ajar. “Ye s’ hae ’t 
for the saxpence — an’ a guid bargain tu, 
for ane o’ sic dimensions !” 

As he spoke, he held the fish in at the 
door, but his eyes were turned to the 
main street, whence the factor’s gig was 
at the moment rounding the corner into 
that in which he stood ; when suddenly 
the salmon-trout was snatched from his 

* Lord Stair, the prime mover in the massacre of 
Glencoe. 


hand, and flung so violently in his face, 
that he staggered back into the road: 
the factor had to pull sharply up to avoid 
driving: over him. His rout rather than 
retreat was followed by a burst of in- 
sulting laughter, and at the same mo- 
ment, out of the house rushed a large 
vile-looking mongrel, with hair like an 
ill-used door-mat and an abbreviated 
nose, fresh from the ashpit, caught up 
the trout, and rushed with it toward the 
gate. 

“That’s richt, my bairn!” shouted 
Mrs. Catanach to the brute as he ran : 
“tak it to Mrs. Courthope. Tak it back 
wi’ my compliments.” 

Amidst a burst of malign laughter she 
slammed her door, and from a window 
sideways watched the young fisherman. 

As he stood looking after the dog in 
wrath and bewilderment, the factor hav- 
ing recovered from the fit of merriment 
into which the sudden explosion of events 
had cast him, and succeeded in quieting 
his scared horse, said, slackening his 
reins to move on, 

“You sell your fish too cheap, Mal- 
colm.” 

“The deil’s i’ the tyke,” rejoined Mal- 
colm, and, seized at last by a sense of the 
ludicrousness of the whole affair, burst 
out laughing, and turned for the High 
street. 

“Na,,na, laddie; the deil’s no awa’ in 
sic a hurry : he bed [remained)," said a 
voice behind him. 

Malcolm turned again and lifted his 
bonnet. It was Miss Horn, who had 
come up from the Seaton. 

“ Did ye see yon, mem ?” he asked. 

“Ay, weel that, as I cam up the brae. 
Dinna stan’ there, laddie. The jaud ’ll 
be watchin’ ye like a cat watchin’ a 
moose. I ken her ! She’s a cat-wuman, 
an’ I canna bide her. She’s no mowse 
[safe to touch). She's in secrets mair 
nor guid, I s’ wad [wager). Come awa’ 
wi’ me ; I want a bit fish. I can ill eat 
an’ her lyin’ deid i’ the hoose — it winna 
gang ower ; but I maun get some strength 
pitten intill me afore the beerial. It’s a 
God’s-mercy I wasna made wi’ feelin’s, 
or what wad hae come o’ me I Whaur’s 
the gude o’ greitin’ ? It’s no worth the 


MALCOLM. 


saut i’ the watter o’ ’t, Ma’colm. It’s an 
ill wardle, an’ micht be a bonny ane — 
gien’t warna for ill men.” 

” Dod, mem ! I’m thinkin’ mair aboot 
ill women, at this present,” said Mal- 
colm. ‘‘Maybe there’s no sic a thing, 
but yon’s unco like ane. As bonny a 
sawmon-troot ’s ever ye saw, mem ! It’s 
a’ I’m cawpable o’ to baud ohn cursed 
that foul tyke o’ hers.” 

‘‘ Hoot, laddie ! haud yer tongue.” 

■ ‘‘Ay will I. I’m no gaun to du ’t, ye 
ken. But sic a fine troot ’s that — the 
verra ane ye wad hae likit, mem !” 

‘‘Never ye min’ the troot. There’s 
mair whaur that cam frae. What anger’t 
her at ye ?” 

‘‘ Naething mair nor that I bude to gie 
Mistress Courthope the first wale [choice) 
o’ my fish.” 

‘‘The wuman’s no worth yer notice, 
’cep to haud oot o’ her gait, laddie ; an’ 
that ye had better luik till, for she’s no 
canny. Dinna ye anger her again gien 
ye can help it. She has an ill luik, an’ 
I canna bide her. — Hae, there’s yer siller. 
Jean, tak in this fish.” 

During the latter part of the conver- 
sation they had been standing at the 
door, while Miss Horn ferreted the need- 
ful pence from a pocket under her gown. 
She now entered, but as Malcolm waited 
for Jean to take the fish, she turned on 
the threshold, and said — 

‘‘Wad ye no like to see her, Ma’colm? 
— A guid frien’ she was to you, sae lang 
’s she was here,” she added after a short 
pause. 

The youth hesitated. 

‘‘ I never saw a corp i’ my life, mem, 
an’ I’m jist some feared,” he said, after 
another brief silence. 

‘‘Hoot, laddie!” returned Miss Horn, 
in a somewhat offended tone — ‘‘That’ll 
be what comes o’ haein’ feelin’s. A 
bonny corp ’s the bonniest thing in crea- 
tion — an’ that quaiet ! — Eh 1 sic a heap 
o’ them as there has been sin’ Awbel,” 
she went on — ‘‘an ilk ane o’ them luik- 
in’ as gien there never had been anither 
but itsel’ 1 Ye oucht to see a corp, Ma’- 
colm. Ye’ll hae’t to du afore ye’re ane 
yersel’, an’ ye’ll never see a bonnier nor 
my Grizel.” 


39 

‘‘Be ’t to yer wull, mem,” said Mal- 
colm resignedly. 

At once she led the way, and he fol- 
lowed her in silence up the stair and into 
the dead-chamber. 

There on the white bed lay the long, 
black, misshapen thing she had called 
‘‘the bit boxie and with a strange sink- 
ing at the heart, Malcolm approached it. 

Miss Horn’s hand came from behind 
him, and withdrew a covering : there lay 
a vision lovely indeed to behold I — a fix- 
ed evanescence — a listening stillness — 
awful, yet with a look of entreaty, at 
once resigned and unyielding, that 
strangely drew the heart of Malcolm. 
He saw a low white forehead, large eye- 
balls upheaving closed lids, finely-mod- 
eled features of which the tightened skin 
showed all the delicacy, and a mouth of 
suffering whereon the vanishing Psyche 
had left the shadow of the smile with 
which she awoke. The tears gathered 
in his eyes, and Miss Horn saw them. 

‘‘Ye maun lay yer han’ upo’ her, Ma’- 
colm,” she said. ‘‘Ye sud aye touch the 
deid, to haud ye ohn dreamed aboot 
them.” 

‘‘ I wad be laith,” answered Malcolm ; 
‘‘she wad be ower bonny a dream to 
miss. — Are they a’ like that?” he added, 
speaking under his breath. 

‘‘Na, ’deed no!” replied Miss Horn, 
with mild indignation. ‘‘Wad ye expec’ 
Bawby Cat’nach to luik like that, no ? — 
I beg yer pardon for mentionin’ the wu- 
man,'my dear,” she added with sudden 
divergence, bending toward the still face, 
and speaking in a tenderly apologetic 
tone ; “ I ken weel ye canna bide the, 
verra name o’ her ; but it s’ be the last 
time ye s’ hear ’t to a’ eternity, my doo.” 
Then turning again to Malcolm — ‘‘ Lay 
yer han’ upon her broo, I tell ye,” she said. 

‘‘ I daurna,” replied the youth, still 
under his breath; ‘‘my ban’s are no 
clean. I wadna for the warl’ touch her 
wi’ fishy ban’s.” 

The same moment, moved by a sud- 
den impulse, whose irresistibleness was 
veiled in his unconsciousness, he bent 
down, and put his lips to the forehead. 

As suddenly he started back erect, 
with dismay on every feature. 


40 


MALCOLM. 


“ Eh, mem !” he cried in an agonized 
whisper, “she’s dooms cauld!’’ 

“What sud she be?’’ retorted Miss 
Horn. “ Wad ye hae her beeried warm ?’’ 

He followed her from the room in 
silence, with the sense of a faint sting 
on his lips. She led him into her parlor, 
and gave him a glass of wine. 

“Ye’ll come to the beerial upo’ Setter- 
day ?’’ she asked, half inviting, half in- 
quiring. 

“I’m sorry to say, mem, ’at I canna,’’ 
he answered. “ I promised Maister Gra- 
ham to tak the schule for him, an’ lat 
hi77i gang.’’ 

“ Weel, weel ! Mr. Graham’s obleeged 
to ye, nae doobt, an’ we canna help it. 
Gie my compliments to yer gfan’father,’’ 
she said. 

“I’ll du that, mem. He’ll be sair 
pleased, for he’s unco gratefu’ for ony 
sic attention,’’ said Malcolm, and with 
the words took his leave. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE FUNERAL. 

That night the weather changed, and 
grew cloudy and cold. Saturday morn- 
ing broke drizzly and dismal. A north- 
east wind tore off the tops of the drear- 
ily tossing billows. All was gray — en- 
during, hopeless gray. Along the coast 
the waves kept roaring on the sands, 
persistent and fateful ; the Scaurnose 
was one mass of foaming white ; and in 
the caves still haunted by the tide, the 
bellowing was like that of thunder. 

Through the drizzle-shot wind and the 
fog blown in shreds from the sea, a large 
number of the most respectable of the 
male population of the burgh, clothed 
in Sunday gloom deepened by the crape 
on their hats, made their way to Miss 
Horn’s, for, despite her rough manners, 
she was held in high repute. It was only 
such as had reason to dread the secret 
communication between closet and house- 
top, that feared her tongue ; if she spoke 
loud, she never spoke false, or backbit 
in the dark. What chiefly conduced, 
however, to the respect in which she was 
held, was that she was one of their own 


people, her father having died minister 
of the parish some twenty years before. 
Comparatively little was known of her 
deceased cousin, who had been much 
of an invalid, and had mostly kept to 
the house, but all had understood that 
Miss Horn was greatly attached to her ; 
and it was for the sake of the living 
mainly that the dead was thus honored. 

As the prayer drew to a close, the 
sounds of trampling and scuffling feet 
bore witness that Watty Witherspail and 
his assistants were carrying the coffin 
down the stair. Soon the company rose 
to follow it, and trooping out, arranged 
themselves behind the hearse, which, 
horrid with nodding plumes and gold 
and black paneling, drew away from the 
door to make room for them. 

Just as they were about to move off, to 
the amazement of the company and the 
few onlookers who, notwithstanding the 
weather, stood around to represent the 
commonalty. Miss Horn herself, solitary, 
in a long black cloak and somewhat 
awful bonnet, issued, and made her way 
through the mourners until she stood 
immediately behind the hearse, by the 
side of Mr. Cairns the parish minister. 
The next moment, Watty Witherspail, 
who had his station at the farther side of 
the hearse, arriving somehow at a know- 
ledge of the apparition, came round by 
the horses’ heads, and with a look of 
positive alarm at the glaring infringe- 
ment of time-honored customs, address- 
ed her in half-whispered tones expostu- 
latory. 

“Ye’ll never be thinkin’ o’ gauin’ yer- 
sel’, mem !’’ he said. 

“What for no, Watty, I wad like to 
ken ?’’ growled Miss Horn from the vault- 
ed depths of her bonnet. 

“The like was never hard tell o’ !’’^ 
returned Watty, with the dismay of an 
orthodox undertaker; righteously jealous 
of all innovation. 

“It ’ll be to tell o’ hencefurth,’’ rejoin- 
ed Miss Horn, who in her risen anger 
spoke aloud, caring nothing who heard 
her. “ Daur preshume, Watty Wither- 
spail,’* she went on, “for no rizzon but 
that I ga’e you the job, an’ unnertook to 
pay ye for’t — an’ that far abune its mar- 


MALCOLM. 


41 


ket value — daur ye preshume, I say, to 
dictate to me what I’m to du an’ what 
I’m no to du anent the maitter in han’ ? 
Think ye I hae been a mither to the puir 
yoong thing for sae mony a year to lat 
her gang awa’ her lane at the last wi’ 
the likes o’ you for company ?” 

“Hoot, mem! there’s the minister at 
your elbuck.’’ 

“I tell ye,^ ye’re but a wheen rouch 
men-fowk 1 There’s no a woman amon’ 
ye to baud things dacent, ’cep I gang 
mysel’. I’m no beggin’ the minister’s 
pardon aither. I'll gang. I maun see 
my puir Grizel till her last bed.’’ 

“ I dread it may be too much for your 
feelings. Miss Horn,’’ said the minister, 
who being an ambitious young man of 
lowly origin, and very shy of the ridic- 
ulous, did not in the least wish her 
company. 

“Feelin’s!” exclaimed Miss Horn in 
a tone of indignant repudiation ; “ I’m 
gallin’ to du what’s richt. I ’s gang, 
and gien ye dinna like my company, 
Mr. Cairns, ye can gang hame, an’ I s’ 
gang withoot ye. Gien she sud happen 
to be luikin doon, she sanna see me 
wantin’ at the last o’ her. But I s’ mak’ 
no wark aboot it. I s’ no putt mysel’ 
ower forret.’’ 

And ere the minister could utter an- 
other syllable, she had left her place to 
go to the rear. The same instant the 
procession began to move, corpse-mar- 
shaled, toward the grave ; and stepping 
aside, she stood erect, sternly eyeing the 
irregular ranks of two and three and 
four as they passed her, intending to 
bring up the rear alone. But already 
there was one in that solitary position : 
with bowed head, Alexander Graham 
walked last and single. The moment 
he caught sight of Miss Horn, he per- 
ceived her design, and, lifting his hat, 
offered his arm. She took it almost 
eagerly, and together they followed in 
silence, through the gusty wind and mo- 
notonous drizzle. 

The school-house was close to the 
churchyard. An instant hush fell upon 
the scholars when the hearse darkened 
the windows, lasting while the horrible 
thing slowly turned to enter the iron 


gates — a deep hush, as if a wave of the 
eternal silence which rounds all our 
noises, had broken across its barriers. 
The mad laird who had been present all 
the morning, trembled from head to foot ; 
yet rose and went to the door with a look 
of strange, subdued eagerness. When 
Miss Horn and Mr. Graham had passed 
into the churchyard, he followed. 

With the bending of uncovered heads, 
in a final gaze of leave-taking, over the 
coffin at rest in the bottom of the grave, 
all that belonged to the ceremony of 
burial was fulfilled ; but the two facts 
that no one left the churchyard, although 
the wind blew and the rain fell, until the 
mound of sheltering earth was heaped 
high over the dead, and that the hands 
of many friends assisted with spade and 
shovel, did much to compensate for the 
lack of a service. 

As soon as this labor was ended, Mr. 
Graham again offered his arm to Miss 
Horn, who had stood in perfect calmness 
watching the whole with her eagle ’s- 
eyes. But although she accepted his 
offer, instead of moving toward the gate 
she kept her position in the attitude of 
a hostess who will follow her friends. 
They were the last to go from the 
churchyard. When they reached the 
schoolhouse she would have had Mr. 
Graham leave her, but he insisted on 
seeing her home. Contrary to her habit 
she yielded and they slowly followed the 
retiring company. 

“ Safe at last !’’ half-sighed Miss Horn, 
as they entered the town — her sole re- 
mark on the way. 

Rounding a corner, they came upon 
Mrs. Catanach standing at a neighbor’s 
door, gazing out upon nothing, as was 
her wont at times, but talking to some 
one in the house behind her. Miss Horn 
turned her head aside as she passed. A 
look of low, malicious, half-triumphant 
cunning lightened across the puffy face 
of the howdy. She cocked one bushy 
eyebrow, setting one eye wide open, drew 
down the other eyebrow, nearly closing 
the eye under it, and stood looking after 
them thus until they were out of sight. 
Then turning her head over her shoul- 
der, she burst into a laugh, softly husky 


42 


MALCOLM. 


with the general flabbiness of her cor- 
poreal conditions. 

“What ails ye, Mistress Catanach ?” 
cried a voice from within. 

“Sic a couple ’s yon twasum wad 
mak !“ she replied, again bursting into 
gelatinous laughter. 

“Wha, than? I canna lea’ my milk- 
parritch to come an’ luik.’’ 

“Ow! jist Meg Horn, the auld kail- 
runt, an’ Sanny Graham, the stickit min- 
ister. I wad like weel to be at the bed- 
din’ o’ them. Eh ! the twa heids o’ 
them upon ae bowster!’’ 

And chuckling a low chuckle, Mrs. 
Catanach moved for her own door. 

As soon as the churchyard was clear 
of the funeral train, the mad laird peeped 
from behind a tall stone, gazed cautious- 
ly around him, and then with slow steps 
came and stood over the new-made 
grave, where the sexton was now laying 
the turf, “to mak a’ snod [trwi] for the 
Sawbath.’’ 

“ Whaur is she gan till ?’’ he murmur- 
ed to himself. — He could generally speak 
better when merely uttering his thoughts 
without attempt at communication. — “ I 
dinna ken whaur I cam frae, an’ I dinna 
ken whaur she’s gan'e till ; but whan I 
gang mysel’, maybe I’ll ken baith. — I 
dinna ken, I dinna ken, I dinna ken 
whaur I cam frae.’’ 

Thus muttering, so lost in the thoughts 
that originated them that he spoke the 
words mechanically, he left the church- 
yard, and returned to the school, where, 
under the superintendence of Malcolm, 
everything had been going on in the 
usual Saturday fashion — the work of the 
day which closed the week’s labors be- 
ing to repeat a certain number of ques- 
tions of the Shorter Catechism (which 
term, alas ! included the answers), and 
next to buttress them with a number of 
suffering caryatids, as it were — texts of 
Scripture, I mean, first petrified and then 
dragged into the service. Before Mr. 
Graham returned, every one had done 
his part except Sheltie, who, excellent 
at asking questions for himself, had a 
very poor memory for the answers to 
those of other people, and was in conse- 
quence often a keepie-m. He did not 


generally heed it much, however, for the 
master was not angry with him on such 
occasions, and they gave him an op- 
portunity of asking in his turn a mul- 
titude of questions of his own. 

When he entered he found Malcolm 
reading The Tempest, and Sheltie sitting 
in the middle of the waste schoolroom, 
with his elbows on the des^ before him, 
and his head and the Shorter Catechism 
between them ; while in the farthest cor- 
ner sat Mr. Stewart, with his eyes fixed 
on the ground, murmuring his answer 
less questions to himself. 

“Come up, Sheltie,’’ said Mr. Graham, 
anxious to let the boy go. “ Which of 
the questions did you break down in to- 
day ?’’ 

“ Please, sir, I cudna rest i’ my grave 
till the resurrection,’’ answered Sheltie, 
with but a dim sense of the humor in- 
volved in the reply. 

‘“What benefits do believers receive 
from Christ at death ?’ ’’ said Mr. Gra- 
ham, putting the question with a smile. 

“‘The souls of believers are at their 
death made perfect in holiness, and do 
immediately pass into glory ; and their 
bodies, being still united to Christ, do 
rest in their graves till the resurrec- 
tion,’ ’’ replied Sheltie, now with perfect 
accuracy ; whereupon the master, fear- 
ing the outbreak of a torrent of coun- 
ter - questions, made haste to dismiss 
him. 

“That’ll do, Sheltie,’’ he said. “Run 
home to your dinner.’’ 

Sheltie shot from the room like a shell 
from a mortar. 

He had barely vanished when Mr. 
Stewart rose and came slowly from his 
corner, his legs appearing to tremble 
under the weight of his hump, which 
moved fitfully up and down in his futile 
attempts to utter the word resurrection. 
As he advanced, he kept heaving one 
shoulder forward, as if he would fain 
bring his huge burden to the front, and 
hold it out in mute appeal to his instruct- 
or ; but before reaching him he suddenly 
stopped, lay down on the floor on his 
back, and commenced rolling from side 
to side, with moans and complaints. 
Mr. Graham interpreted the action into 


MALCOLM. 


43 


the question — How was such a body as 
his to rest in its grave till the resurrection 
— perched thus on its own back in the 
coffin ? All the answer he could think 
of was to lay hold of his hand, lift 
him, and point upward. The poor fellow 
shook his head, glanced over his shoul- 


der at his hump, and murmured, ‘‘ Heavy, 
heavy !” seeming to imply that it would 
be hard for him to rise and ascend at the 
last day. 

He had doubtless a dim notion that all 
his trouble had to do with his hump. 



XXX. 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE OLD CHURCH. 

T he next day, the day of the Resur- 
rection, rose glorious from its sepul- 
chre of sea-fog and drizzle. It had pour- 
ed all night long, but at sunrise the clouds 
had broken and scattered, and the air 
was the purer for the cleansing rain, 
while the earth shone with that peculiar 
lustre which follows the weeping which 
has endured its appointed night. The 
larks were at it again, singing as if their 
hearts would break for joy as they hover- 
ed in brooding exultation over the song 
of the future ; for their nests beneath 
hoarded a wealth of larks for summers to 
come. Especially about the old church 
— half buried in the ancient trees of Los- 
sie House — the birds that day were jubi- 
lant ; their throats seemed too narrow to 
let out the joyful air that filled all their 
hollow bones and quills : they sang as 
if they must sing, or choke with too much 
gladness. Beyond the short spire and 
its shining cock, rose the balls and stars 
and arrowy vanes of the House, glitter- 
ing in gold and sunshine. 

The inward hush of the Resurrection, 
broken only by the prophetic birds, the 
poets of the groaning and travailing 
creation, held time and space as in a 
trance ; and the centre from which radi- 
ated both the hush and the caroling ex- 
pectation seemed to Alexander Graham 
to be the churchyard in which he was 
now walking in the cool of the morning. 
It was more carefully kept than most 
Scottish churchyards, and yet was not 
too trim : Nature had a word in the affair 
— was allowed her part of mourning, in 
long grass and moss and the crumbling 
away of stone. The wholesomeness of 
decay, which both in nature and human- 
ity is but the miry road back to life, was 
not unrecognized here ; there was noth- 
ing of the hideous attempt to hide death 
in the garments of life. The master 
44 


walked about gently, now stopping to’ 
read some well-known inscription and 
ponder for a moment over the words; 
and now wandering across the stoneless 
mounds, content to be forgotten by all 
but those who loved the departed. At 
length he seated himself on a slab by 
the side of the mound that rose but yes- 
terday : it was sculptured with symbols of 
decay — needless surely where the origi- 
nals lay about the mouth of every newly 
opened grave, and as surely ill-befitting 
the precincts of a church whose indwell- 
ing gospel is of life victorious over death ! 

“What are these stones,” he said to 
himself, “but monuments to oblivion? 
They are not memorials of the dead, but 
memorials of the forgetfulness of the 
living. How vain it is to send a poor 
forsaken name, like the title-page of a 
lost book, down the careless stream of 
time ! Let me serve my generation, and 
let God remember me !” 

The morning wore on ; the sun rose 
higher and higher. He drew from his 
pocket the Nosce Teipsum of Sir John 
Davies, and was still reading, in quiet 
enjoyment of the fine logic of the lawyer- 
poet, when he heard the church key, in 
the trembling hand of Jonathan Auld- 
buird, the sexton, jar feebly battling with 
the reluctant lock. Soon the people be- 
gan to gather, mostly in groups and cou- 
ples. At length came solitary Miss Horn, 
whom the neighbors, from respect to her 
sorrow, had left to walk alone. But Mr. 
Graham went to meet her, and accom- 
panied her into the church. 

It was a cruciform building, as old as 
the vanished monastery, and the burial- 
place of generations of noble blood ; the 
dust of royalty even lay under its floor. 
A knight of stone reclined cross-legged 
in a niche with an arched Norman can- 
opy in one of the walls, the rest of which 
was nearly encased in large tablets of 
white marble, for at its foot lay the ashes 


MALCOLM. 


45 


-of barons and earls whose title was ex- j 
tinct, and whose lands had been inherit- j 
ed by the family of Lossie. Inside as 
well as outside of the church the ground 
had risen with the dust of generations, 
so that the walls were low ; and heavy 
galleries having been erected in parts, 
the place was filled with shadowy re- 
cesses and haunted with glooms. From 
a window in the square pew where he 
sat, so small and low that he had to bend 
his head to look out of it, the school- 
master could see a rivulet of sunshine, 
streaming through between two upright 
gravestones, and glorifying the long 
grass of a neglected mound that lay 
close to the wall under the wintry drip 
from the eaves ; when he raised his head, , 
the church looked very dark. The best 
way there to preach the Resurrection, he 
thought, would be to contrast the sepul- 
chral gloom of the church, its dreary 
psalms and drearier sermons, with the 
sunlight on the graves, the lark-filled 
sky, and the wind blowing where it list- 
ed. But although the minister was a 
young man of the commonest order, 
educated to the church that he might 
eat bread, hence a mere willing slave to 
the beck of his lord and master, the 
patron, and but a parrot in the pulpit, 
the schoolmaster not only endeavored to 
pour his feelings and desires into the 
mould of his prayers, but listened to the 
sermon wdth a countenance that revealed 
no distaste for the weak and unsavory 
broth ladled out to him to nourish his 
soul withal. When, however, the seT^ice 
— though whose purposes the affair could 
be supposed to serve except those of Mr. 
Cairns himself, would have been a curi- 
ous question — was over, he did breathe a 
sigh of relief ; and when he stepped out 
into the sun and wind which had been 
shining and blowing all the time of the 
dreary ceremony, he wondered whether 
the larks might not have had the best of 
it in the God-praising that had been going 
on for two slow-paced hours. Yet, having 
been so long used to the sort of thing, 
he did not mind it half so much as his 
friend Malcolm, who found the Sunday 
observances an unspeakable weariness 
to both flesh and spirit. 


On the present occasion, however, 
Malcolm did not find the said observ- 
ances dreary, for he observed nothing 
but the vision which radiated from the 
dusk of the small gallery forming the 
Lossie pew, directly opposite the Norman 
canopy and stone crusader. Unconven- 
tional, careless girl as Lady Florimel had 
hitherto shown herself to him, he saw her 
sit that morning like the proudest of her 
race, alone, and, to all appearance, un- 
aware of a single other person’s being 
in the church besides herself. She mani- 
fested no interest in what was going on, 
nor indeed felt any — ^how could she ? — 
never parted her lips to sing ; sat during 
the prayer ; and throughout the sermon 
seemed to Malcolm not once to move 
her eyes from the carved crusader. When 
all was over, she still sat motionless — sat 
until the last old woman had hobbled 
out. Then she rose, walked slowly from 
the gloom of the church, flashed into the 
glow of the churchyard, gleamed across 
it to a private door in the wall, which a 
servant held^ for her, and vanished. If, 
a mordent after, the notes of a merry 
song invaded the ears of those who yet 
lingered, who could dare suspect that 
proudly sedate damsel of thus suddenly 
breaking the ice of her public behavior ? 

For a mere school-girl she had cer- 
tainly done the lady’s part well. What 
she wore I do not exactly know ; nor 
would it perhaps be well to describe what 
might seem grotesque to such prejudiced 
readers as have no judgment beyond the 
fashions of the day. But I will not let 
pass the opportunity of reminding them 
how sadly old-fashioned we of the pres- 
ent hour also look in the eyes of those 
equally infallible judges who have been 
in dread procession toward us ever since 
we began to be — our posterity— judges 
who perhaps will doubt with a smile 
whether we even knew what love was, 
or ever had a dream of the grandeur 
they are on the point of grasping. But 
at least bethink yourselves, dear poster- 
ity ! we have not ceased because you 
have begun. 

Out of the church the blind Duncan 
strode with long, confident strides. He 
had no staff to aid him, for he never car- 


46 


MALCOLM. 


ried one when in his best clothes ; but 
he leaned proudly on Malcolm’s arm, if 
one who walked so erect could be said 
to lean. He had adorned his bonnet 
the autumn before with a sprig of the 
large purple heather, but every bell had 
fallen from it, leaving only the naked 
spray, pitiful analogue of the whole 
withered exterior of which it formed 
part. His sporran, however, hid the 
stained front of his kilt, and his Sunday 
coat had been new within ten years— 
the gift of certain ladies of Portlossie, 
some of whom, to whose lowland eyes 
the kilt was obnoxious, would have add- 
ed a pair of trowsers, had not Miss Horn 
stoutly opposed them, confident that 
Duncan would regard the present as an 
insult. And she w'as right; for rather 
than wear anything instead of the phili- 
beg, Duncan would have, plaited him- 
self one with his own blind fingers out 
of an old sack. Indeed, although the 
trews were never at any time unknown 
in the Highlands, Duncan had always 
regarded them as effeminate, and espe- 
cially in his lowland exile would have 
looked upon the wearing of them as a 
disgrace to his highland birth. 

“ Tat wass a ferry coot sairmon to-day, 
Malcolm,” he said, as they stepped from 
the churchyard upon the road. 

Malcolm, knowing well whither conver- 
sation on the subject would lead, made 
no reply. His grandfather, finding him 
silent, iterated his remark, with the ad- 
dition — 

‘‘Put how could it pe a paad one, 
you’ll pe thinking, my poy, when he’d 
pe hafing such a text to keep him 
straight ?” 

Malcolm continued silent, for a good 
many people were within hearing, whom 
he did not wish to see amused with the 
remarks certain to follow any he could 
make. But Mr. Graham, who happened 
to be walking near the old man on the 
other side, out of pure politeness made a 
partial response. 

‘‘Yes, Mr. MacPhail,” he said, “it was 
a grand text.” 

‘‘ Yes, and it wass ’ll pe a cran’ sair- 
mon,” persisted Duncan. ‘“ Fenchence 
is mine — I will repay.’ Ta Lord loves 


fenchence. It’s a fine thing, fenchence. 
.To make ta wicked know tat tey ’ll pe 
peing put men ! Yes ; ta Lord will slay 
ta wicked. Ta Lord will gif ta honest 
man fenchence upon his enemies. It 
wass a cran’ sairmon !” 

‘‘ Don’t you think vengeance a very 
dreadful thing, Mr. MacPhail ?” said the 
schoolmaster. 

‘‘Yes, for ta von tat ’ll pe in ta wrong. 
— I wish ta fenchence was mine!” he 
added with a loud sigh. 

‘‘ But the Lord doesn’t think any of us 
fit to be trusted with it, and so keeps it 
to himself, you see.” 

‘‘Yes; and tat ’ll pe pecause it ’ll pe 
too coot to be gifing to another. And 
some people would be waik of heart, 
and be letting teir enemies co.” 

‘‘ I suspect it’s for the opposite reason, 
Mr. MacPhail : — we would go much too 
far, making no allowances, causing the 
innocent to suffer along with the guilty, 
neither giving fair play nor avoiding 
cruelty — and indeed — ” 

‘‘ No fear !” interrupted Duncan eager- 
ly — ‘‘no fear, when ta wrong wass as 
larch as Morven I” 

In the sermon there had not been one 
word as to Saint Paul’s design in quoting 
the text. It had been but a theatrical set- 
ting forth of the vengeance of God upon 
sin, illustrated with several common tales 
of the discovery of murder by strange 
means — a sermon after Duncan’s own 
heart ; and nothing but the way in which 
he now snuffed the wind with head 
thrown back and nostrils dilated, could 
have given an adequate idea of how 
much he enjoyed the recollection of it. 

Mr. Graham had for many years be- 
lieved that he must have some personal 
wrongs to brood over — wrongs, prob- 
ably, to which were to be attributed his 
loneliness and exile ; but of such Dun- 
can had never spoken, uttering no male- 
dictions except against the real or imag- 
ined foes of his family.* 

*What added to the likelihood of Mr. Graham's 
conjecture was the fact, well enough known to him, 
though to few lowlanders besides, that revenge is not 
a characteristic of the Gael. Whatever instances of 
it may have appeared, and however strikingly they 
may have been worked up in fiction, such belong to 
the individual and not to the race. A remarkable 


MALCOLM. 


47 


The master placed so little value on 
any possible results of mere argument, 
and had indeed so little faith in any 
words except such as came hot from the 
heart, that he said no more, but, with an 
invitation to Malcolm to visit him in the 
evening, wished them good-day, and 
turned in at his own door. 

The two went slowly on toward the 
sea-town. The road was speckled with 
home-goers, single and in groups, hold- 
ing a quiet Sunday pace to their dinners. 
Suddenly Duncan grasped Malcolm’s 
arm with the energy of perturbation, 
almost of fright, and said in a loud 
whisper : 

“Tere’ll pe something efil not far from 
her, Malcolm, my son ! Look apout, 
look apout, and take care how you’ll pe 
leading her.” 

Malcolm looked about, and replied, 
pressing Duncan’s arm, and speaking in 
a low voice, far less audible than his 
whisper, 

‘‘There’s naebody near, daddy — nae- 
body but the howdie-wife.” 

‘‘What howdie-wife do you mean, 
Malcolm ?” 

‘‘ Hoot ! Mistress Catanach, ye ken. 
Dinna lat her hear ye.” 

‘‘ I had a feeshion, Malcolm — one mo- 
ment, and no more ; ta darkness closed 
arount it : I saw a ped, Malcolm, and — ” 

‘‘Wheesht, wheesht, daddy!” pleaded 
Malcolm importunately. ‘‘She hears 
ilka word ye’re sayin’. She’s awfu’ gleg, 
an’ she’s as poozhonous as an edder. 
Haud yer tongue, daddy ; for guid-sake 
hand yer tongue.” 

The old man yielded, grasping Mal- 
colm’s arm, and quickening his pace, 

proof of this occurs in the history of the family of 
Glenco itself. What remained of it after the mas- 
sacre in 1689, ro.se in 1745, and joined the forces of 
Prince Charles Edward. Arriving in the neighbor- 
hood of the residence of Lord Stair, whose grand- 
father had been one of the chief instigators of the 
massacre, the prince took special precautions lest the 
people of Glenco should wreak inherited vengeance 
on the earl. But they were so indignant at being 
supposed capable of visiting on the innocent the guilt 
of their ancestors, that it was with much difficulty 
they were prevented from forsaking the standard of 
the prince and returning at once to their homes. 
Perhaps a yet stronger proof is the fact, fully asserted 
by one Gaelic scholar at least, that their literature 
contains nothing to foster feelings of revenge. 


though his breath came hard, as through 
the gathering folds of asthma. Mrs. 
Catanach also quickened her pace and 
came gliding along the grass by the side 
of the road, noiseless as the adder to 
which Malcolm had likened her, and 
going much faster than she seemed. 
Her great round body looked a persist- 
ent type of her calling, and her arms 
seemed to rest in front of her as upon a 
ledge. In one hand she carried a small 
Bible, round which was folded her pock- 
et-handkerchief, and in the other a bunch 
of southern-wood and rosemary. She 
wore a black silk gown, a white shawl, 
and a great straw bonnet with yellow 
ribbons in huge bows, and looked the 
very pattern of Sunday respectability; 
but her black eyebrows gloomed ominous, 
and an evil smile shadowed about the 
corners of her mouth as she passed with- 
out turning her head or taking the least 
notice of them. Duncan shuddered, and 
breathed yet harder, but seemed to re- 
cover as she increased the distance be- 
tween them. They walked the rest of 
the way in silence, however ; and even 
after they reached home, Duncan made 
no allusion to his late discomposure. 

‘‘ What was’t ye thocht ye saw, as we 
cam frae the kirk, daddy ?” asked Mal- 
colm when they were seated at their 
dinner of broiled mackerel and boiled 
potatoes. 

‘‘ In other times she’ll pe hating such 
feeshions often, Malcolm, my son,” he 
returned, avoiding an answer. ‘‘Like 
other pards of her race she would pe see- 
ing — in the speerit, where old Tuncan 
can see. And she’ll pe telling you, Mal- 
colm — peware of tat voman ; for ta vo- 
man was thinking pad thoughts; and 
tat will pe what make her shutter and 
shake, my son, as she’ll be coing py.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCHYARD. 

On Sundays, Malcolm was always 
more or less annoyed by the obtrusive 
presence of his arms and legs, accom- 
panied by a vague feeling that, at any 
moment, and no warning given, they 


48 


MALCOLM. 


might, with some insane and irrepres- 
sible flourish, break the Sabbath on their 
own account, and degrade him in the 
eyes of his fellow-townsmen, who seem- 
ed all silently watching how he bore the 
restraints of the holy day. It must be 
conceded, however, that the discomfort 
had quite as much to do with his Sun- 
day clothes as with the Sabbath-day, 
and that it interfered but little with an 
altogether peculiar calm which appeared 
to him to belong in its own right to the 
Sunday, whether its light flowed in the 
sunny cataracts of June, or oozed through 
the spongy clouds of November. As he 
walked again to the Alton, or Old Town 
in the evening, the filmy floats of white 
in the lofty blue, the droop of the long 
dark grass by the side of the short bright 
corn, the shadows pointing like all 
lengthening shadows toward the quarter 
of hope, the yellow glory filling the air 
and paling the green below, the unseen 
larks hanging aloft — like air -pitcher- 
plants that overflowed in song — like 
electric jars emptying themselves of the 
sweet thunder of bliss in the flashing of 
wings and the trembling of melodious 
throats ; these were indeed of the sum- 
mer, but the cup of rest had been poured 
out upon them ; the Sabbath brooded 
like an embodied peace over the earth, 
and under its wings they grew sevenfold 
peaceful — with a peace that might be 
felt, like the hand of a mother pressed 
upon the half-sleeping child. The rust- 
ed iron cross on the eastern gable of the 
old church stood glowing lustreless in 
the westering sun ; while the gilded 
vane, whose business was the wind, 
creaked radiantly this way and that, in 
the flaws from the region of the sunset : 
its shadow flickered soft on the new 
grave, where the grass of the wounded 
sod was drooping. Again seated on a 
neighbor stone, Malcolm found his 
friend. 

“See,” said the schoolmaster as the 
fisherman sat down beside him, “how 
the shadow from one grave stretches 
like an arm to embrace another ! In this 
light the churchyard seems the very 
birthplace of shadows : see them flowing 
out of the tombs as from fountains, to 


overflow the world ! — Does the morning 
or the evening light suit such a place 
best, Malcolm ?” 

The pupil thought for a while. 

“The evenin’ licht, sir,” he answered 
at length ; “ for ye see the sun’s deein’ 
like, an’ deith’s like a fa’in’ asleep, an’ 
the grave’s the bed, an’ the sod’s the 
bed-claes, an’ there’s a lang nicht to the 
fore.” 

“Are ye sure o’ that, Malcolm ?” 

“ It’s the wye folk thinks an’ says 
aboot it, sir.” 

“Or maybe doesna think, an’ only 
says ?” 

“ Maybe, sir ; I dinna ken.” 

“Come here, Malcolm,” said Mr. Gra- 
ham, and took him by the arm, and led 
him toward the east end of the church, 
where a few tombstones were crowded 
against the wall, as if they would press 
close to a place they might not enter. 

“Read that,” he said, pointing to a 
flat stone, where every hollow letter was 
shown in high relief by the growth in it 
of a lovely moss. The rest of the stone 
was rich in gray and green and brown 
lichens, but only in the letters grew the 
bright moss : the inscription stood as it 
were in the hand of Nature herself— 
"LLe is not here ; he is 7‘isen." 

While Malcolm gazed, trying to think 
what his master would have him think, 
the latter resumed : 

“If. he is risen — if the sun is up, Mal- 
colm — then the morning and not the 
evening is the season for the place of 
tombs ; the morning when the shadows 
are shortening and separating, not the 
evening when they are growing all into 
one. I used to love the churchyard 
best in the evening, when the past was 
more to me than the future ; now I visit 
it almost every bright summer morning, 
and only occasionally at night.” 

“But, sir, isna deith a dreadfu’ thing?” 
said Malcolm. 

“ That depends on whether a man re- 
gards it as his fate, or as the will of a 
perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread ; 
but if God be light, then death itself must 
be full of splendor — a splendor probably 
too keen for our eyes to receive.” 

“ But there’s the deein’ itsel’ : isna that 


MALCOLM. 


49 


fearsome ? It’s that I wad be fleyed 
at.” 

” I don’t see why it should be. It’s 
the want of a God that makes it dread- 
ful, and you will be greatly to blame, 
Malcolm, if you haven’t found your God 
by the time you have to die.” 

They were startled by a gruff voice 
near them. The speaker was hidden by 
a corner of the church. 

“Ay, she’s weel happit {covered)," it 
said. “But a grave never luiks richt 
wantin’ a stane, an’ her auld cousin wad 
hear o’ nane bein’ laid ower her. I said 
it micht be set up at her heid, whaur she 
wad never fin’ the weicht o’ ’t ; but na, 
na ! nane o’ ’t for her ! She’s ane ’at 
maun tak her ain gait, say the ither 
thing wha likes.” 

It was Wattie Witherspail who spoke 
— a thin shaving of a man, with a deep, 
harsh, indeed startling voice. 

“An’ what ailed her at a stane?” re- 
turned the voice of Jonathan Auldbuird, 
the sexton. “ — Na doobt it wad be the 
expensp ?” 

“ Amna I tellin’ ye what it was ? Deil 
a bit o’ the expense cam intil the calca- 
lation ! The auld maiden’s nane sae 
close as fowk ’at disna ken her wad mak 
her oot. I ken her weel. She wadna 
hae a stane laid upon her as gien she 
wanted to haud her doon, puir thing ! 
She said, says she, ‘ The yerd’s eneuch 
upo’ the tap o’ her, wantin’ that !’ ” 

“ It micht be some sair, she wad be 
thinkin’ doobtless, for sic a waik worn 
cratur to lift whan the trump was blawn,” 
said the sexton, with the feeble laugh of 
one who doubts the reception of his wit. 

“Weel, 1 div whiles think,” responded 
Wattie, — but it was impossible from his 
tone to tell whether or not he spoke in 
earnest, — “’at maybe my boxies is a 
wheen ower weel made for the use they’re 
pitten till. They sudna be that ill to 
rive — gien a’ be true ’at the minister 
says. Ye see, we dinna ken whan that 
day may come, an’ there may na be 
time for the wat an’ the worm to ca 
{drive) the boords apairt.” 

“ Hoots, man ! it’s no your lang nails 
nor yet yer heidit screws ’ll haud doon 
the redeemt, gien the jeedgement war 
4 


the morn’s mornin’,” said the sexton ; 
“an’ for the lave, they wad be glaid 
eneuch to bide whaur they are ; but 
they’ll a’ be howkit oot, — fear na ye 
that.” 

“The Lord grant a blessed uprisin’ to 
you an’ me, Jonathan, at that day !” said 
Wattie, in the tone of one who felt him- 
self uttering a more than ordinarily re- 
ligious sentiment ; and on the word fol- 
lowed the sound of their retreating foot- 
steps. 

“ How close together may come the 
solemn and the grotesque ! the ludicrous 
and the majestic !” said the schoolmaster. 
“ Here, to us lingering in awe about the 
doors beyond which lie the gulfs of the 
‘unknown — to our very side come the 
wright and the grave-digger with their 
talk of the strength of coffins and the 
judgment of the living God !” 

“I hae whiles thoucht mysel’, sir,” 
said Malcolm, “it was gey strange-like 
to hae a wuman o’ the mak o’ Mistress 
Catanach sittin’ at the receipt o’ bairns, 
like the gate-keeper o’ the ither warl’, 
wi’ the hasp o’ ’t in her han’ : it doesna 
promise ower weel for them ’at she lats 
in. An’ noo ye hae pitten’t intil my 
heid that there’s Wattie Witherspail an’ 
Jonathan Auldbuird for the porters to 
open an’ lat a’ that’s left o’ ’s oot again ! 
Think o’ sic-like haein’ sic a han’ in sic 
solemn matters !” 

“ Indeed some of us have strange por- 
ters,” said Mr. Graham, with a smile, 
“both to open to us and to close behind 
us ; yet even in them lies the human na- 
ture, which, itself the embodiment of the 
unknown, wanders out through the gates 
of mystery, to wander back, it may be, 
in a manner not altogether unlike that 
by which it came.” 

In contemplative moods, the school- 
master spoke in a calm and loftily sus- 
tained style of book-English — quite an- 
other language from that he used when 
he sought to rouse the consciences of 
his pupils, and strangely contrasted with 
that in which Malcolm kept up his side 
of the dialogue. 

“I houp, sir,” said the latter, “it ’ll 
be nae sort o’ a celestial Mistress Cata- 
nach ’at ’ll be waiting for me o’ the ither 


50 


MALCOLM. 


side ; nor yet for my puir daddy, wha cud 
ill bide bein’ wamled aboot upo’/;<?rknee.” 

Mr.'Graham laughed outright. 

“ If there be one to act the nurse,” he 
answered, ” I presume there will be one 
to take the mother’s part too.” 

‘‘But speakin’ o’ the grave, sir,” pur- 
sued Malcolm, ‘‘I wiss ye cud drop a 
word ’at micht be o’ some comfort to my 
daddy. It’s plain to me, frae words he 
lats fa’ noo an’ than, that, instead o’ 
lea’in’ the warl’ ahint him whan he dees, 
he thinks to lie smorin’ an’ smocherin’ 
i’ the mools, clammy an’ weet, but a’ 
there, an’ trimlin’ at the thocht o’ the 
suddent awfu’ roor an’ dirl o’ the brazen 
trumpet o’ the archangel. I wiss ye wad 
luik in an’ say something till him some 
nicht. It’s nae guid mentionin’ ’t to the 
minister ; he wad only gie a lauch an’ 
gang awa’. An’ gien ye cud jist slide 
in a word aboot forgiein’ his enemies, 
sir ! I made licht o’ the maitter to Mis- 
tress Courthope, ’cause she only maks 
him waur. She does weel wi’ what the 
minister pits intill her, but she has little 
o’ her ain to mix’t up wi’, an’ sae has 
sma’ weicht wi’ the likes o’ my gran’- 
father. Only ye winna lat him think ye 
called on purpose.” 

They walked about the churchyard 
until the sun went down in what Mr. 
Graham called the grave of his endless 
resurrection — the clouds on the one side 
bearing all the pomp of his funeral, the 
clouds on the other all the glory of his 
uprising ; and when now the twilight 
trembled filmy on the borders of the 
dark, the master once more seated him- 
self beside the new grave, and motion- 
ed to Malcolm to take his place beside 
him : there they talked and dreamed to- 
gether of the life to come, with many 
wanderings and returns; and little as 
the boy knew of the ocean-depths of 
sorrowful experience in the bosom of his 
companion whence floated up the break- 
ing bubbles of rainbow-hued thought, 
his words fell upon his heart — not to be 
provender for the birds of flitting fancy 
and airy speculation, but the seed — it 
might be decades ere it ripened — of a 
coming harvest of hope. At length the 
master rose and said — 


‘‘Malcolm, I’m going in : I should like 
you to stay here half an hour alone, and 
then go straight home to bed.” 

For the master believed in solitude and 
silence. Say rather, he believed in God. 
What the youth might think, feel, or 
judge, he could not tell ; but he believed 
that when the human is still, the Divine 
speaks to it, because it is its own. 

Malcolm consented willingly. The 
darkness had deepened, the graves all 
but vanished ; an old setting moon ap- 
peared, boat-like, over a’ great cloudy 
chasm, into which it slowly sank ; blocks 
of cloud, with stars between, possessed 
the sky ; all nature seemed thinking 
about death ; a listless wind began to 
blow, and Malcolm began to feel as if 
he were awake too long, and ought to be 
asleep — as if he were out in a dream — a 
dead man that had risen too soon or 
lingered too late — so lonely, so forsaken ! 
The wind, soft as it was, seemed to blow 
through his very soul. Yet something 
held him, and his half hour was long 
over when he left the churchyard. 

As he walked home, the words of a 
German poem, a version of which Mr. 
Graham had often repeated to him, and 
once more that same night, kept ringing 
in his heart : 

Uplifted is the stone. 

And all mankind arisen ! 

We men remain thine own, 

And vanished is our prison 1 

What bitterest grief can stay 
Before thy golden cup. 

When earth and life give way, 

And with our Lord we sup? 

To the marriage Death doth call. 

The maidens are not slack ; 

The lamps are burning all — 

Of oil there is no lack. 

Afar I hear the walking 
Of thy great marriage-throng ! 

And hark ! the stars are talking 
With human tone and tongue 1 

Courage ! for life is hasting 
To endless life away ; 

The inner fire, unwasting. 

Transfigures our dull clay 1 

See the stars melting, sinking. 

In life-wine, golden-bright ! 

We, of the splendor drinking. 

Shall grow to stars of light. 

Lost, lost are all our losses ; 

Love set for ever free ; 

The full life heaves and tosses 
Like an eternal sea ! 


MALCOLM. 


51 


One endless living story ! 

One poem spread abroad ! 
And the sun of all our glory 
Is the countenance of God. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. 

The next morning rose as lovely as if 
the mantle of the departing Resurrec- 
tion-day had fallen upon it. Malcolm 
rose with it, hastened to his boat, and 
pulled out into the bay for an hour or 
two’s fishing. Nearly opposite the great 
conglomerate rock at the western end 
of the dune, called the Bored Craig 
\^Perf orated Crag) because of a large 
hole that went right through it, he be- 
gan to draw in his line. Glancing shore- 
ward as he leaned over the gunwale, he 
spied at the foot of the rock, near the 
opening, a figure in white, seated, with 
bowed head. It was of course the mys- 
terious lady, whom he had twice before 
seen thereabout at this unlikely if not 
untimely hour ; but with yesterday fresh 
in his mind, how could he fail to see in 
her an angel of the resurrection waiting 
at the sepulchre to tell the glad news 
that the Lord was risen ? 

Many were the glances he cast shore- 
ward as he rebaited his line, and, having 
thrown it again into the water, sat wait- 
ing until it should be time to fire the 
swivel. Still the lady sat on, in her 
whiteness a creature of the dawn, with- 
out even lifting her head. At length, 
having added a few more fishes to the 
little heap in the bottom of his boat, and 
finding his watch bear witness that the 
hour was at hand, he seated himself on 
his thwart, and rowed lustily to the shore, 
his bosom filled with the hope of yet an- 
other sight of the lovely face, and another 
hearing of the sweet English voice and 
speech. But the very first time he turn- 
ed his head to look, he saw but the slo- 
ping foot of the rock sink bare into the 
shore. No white-robed angel sat at the 
gate of the resurrection ; no moving 
thing was visible on the far-vacant sands. 
When he reached the top of the dune, 
there was no living creature beyond but 
a few sheep feeding on the thin grass. 


He fired the gun, rowed back to the Sea- 
ton, ate his breakfast, and set out to car- 
ry the best of his fish to the House. 

The moment he turned the corner of 
her street, he saw Mrs. Catanach stand- 
ing on her threshold with her arms 
akimbo : although she was always tidy, 
and her house spotlessly trim, she yet 
seemed for ever about the door, on the 
outlook at least, if not on the watch. 

“What hae ye in yer bit basket the 
day, Ma’colm ?’’ she said, with a peculiar 
smile, which was not sweet enough to 
restore vanished confidence. 

“Naething guid for dogs,” answered 
Malcolm, and was walking past. 

But she made a step forward and, with 
a laugh meant to indicate friendly amuse- 
ment, said, 

“ Lat’s see what’s intill’t ony gait [any- 
how). The doggie’s awa’ on’ ’s traivels 
the day.” 

“’Deed, Mistress Catanach,” persisted 
Malcolm, “ I canna say I like to hae my 
ain fish flung i’ my face, nor yet to see 
ill-faured tykes rin awa’ wi’ ’t afore my 
verra een.” 

After the warning given him by Miss 
Horn, and the strange influence her pres- 
ence had had on his grandfather, Mal- 
colm preferred keeping up a negative 
quarrel with the woman. 

“Dinna ca’ ill names,” she returned: 
“ my dog wad tak it waur to be ca’d an 
ill-faured tyke, nor to hae fish flung in 
his face. Lat’s see what’s i’ yer basket, 
I say.” 

As she spoke, she laid her hand on 
the basket, but Malcolm drew back, and 
turned away toward the gate. 

“Lord safe us !” she cried, with a yell- 
ing laugh; “ye’re no feared at an auld 
wife like me ?” 

“I dinna ken; maybe ay an’ maybe 
no — I wadna say. But I dinna want to 
hae onything to du wi’ ye, mem.” 

“ Ma’colm MacPhail,*^ said Mrs. Cata- 
nach, lowering her voice to a hoarse 
whisper, while every trace of laughter 
vanished from her countenance, “ ye hae 
had mair to du wi’ me nor ye ken, an* 
aiblins ye’ll hae mair yet nor ye can weel 
help. Sae caw canny, my man.” 

“Ye may hae the layin’ o’ me oot,” 


52 


MALCOLM. 


said Malcolm, “ but it sanna be wi’ my 
wull ; an’ gien I hae ony life left i’ me, I 
s’ gie ye a fleg {/right).” 

“Ye may get a waur yersel’ : I hae 
frichtit the deid afore noo. Sae gang 
yer wa’s to Mistress Coorthoup, wi’ a 
flech {/^a) i’ yer lug {ear). I wuss ye 
luck — sic luck as I wad wuss ye !’’ 

Her last words sounded so like a curse, 
that to overcome a cauld creep, Malcolm 
had to force a laugh. 

The cook at the House bought all his 
fish, for they had had none for the last 
few days, because of the storm ; and he 
was turning to go home by the river-side, 
when he heard a tap on a window, and 
saw Mrs. Courthope beckoning him to 
another door. 

“His lordship desired me to send you 
to him, Malcolm, the next time you call- 
ed,’’ she said. . 

“Weel, mem, here I am,’’ answered 
the youth. 

“You’ll find him in the flower-garden,’’ 
she said. “ He’s up early to-day, for a 
wonder.’’ 

He left his basket at' the top of the 
stairs that led down the rock to the level 
of the burn, and walked up the valley 
of the stream. 

The garden was a curious old-fashion- 
ed place, with high hedges, and close 
alleys of trees, where two might have 
wandered long' without meeting, and it 
was some time before he found any hint 
of the presence of the marquis. At 
length, however, he heard voices, and 
following the sound, walked along one 
of the alleys till he came to a little ar- 
bor, where he discovered the marquis 
seated, and, to his surprise, the white- 
robed lady of the sands beside him. A 
great deer-hound at his master’s feet was 
bristling his mane, and baring his eye- 
teeth with a growl, but the girl had a 
hold of his collar. 

“Who are you?” asked the marquis 
rather gruffly, as if he had never seen 
him before. 

“I beg yer lordship’s pardon,’’ said 
Malcolm, “but they telled me yer lord- 
ship wantit to see me, and sent me to 
the flooer-gairden. Will I gang, or will 
I bide ?’’ 


The marquis looked at him for a mo- 
ment, frowningly, and made no reply. 
But the frown gradually relaxed before 
Malcolm’s modest but unflinching gaze, 
and the shadow of a smile slowly usurp- 
ed its place. He still kept silent, how- 
ever. 

“Am I to gang or bide, my lord ?’’ re- 
peated Malcolm. 

“ Can’t you wait for an answer ?’’ 

“As lang’s yer lordship likes. — Will I 
gang an’ walk aboot, mem — my lady 
— till his lordship’s made up his min’ ? 
Wad that please him, duv ye think ?’’ he 
said, in the tone of one who seeks ad- 
vice. 

But the girl only smiled, and the mar- 
quis said, “Go to the devil.’’ 

“ I maun luik to yer lordship for the 
necessar’ directions,’’ rejoined Malcolm. 

“ Your tongue’s long enough to inquire 
as you go,’’ said the marquis. 

A reply in the same strain rushed to 
Malcolm’s lips, but he checked himself 
in time, and stood silent, with his bonnet 
in his hand, fronting the two. The mar- 
quis sat gazing as if he had nothing to 
say to him, but after a few moments the 
lady spoke — not to Malcolm, however. 

“ Is there any danger in boating here, 
papa ?’’ she said. 

“ Not more, I dare say, than there ought 
to be,’’ replied the marquis listlessly. 
“Why do you ask ?’’ 

“ Because I should so like a row ! I 
want to see how the shore looks to the 
mermaids.” 

“Well, I will take you some day, if 
we can find a proper boat.” 

“ Is yours a proper boat ?” she asked, 
turning to Malcolm with a sparkle of fun 
in her eyes. 

“ That depen’s on my lord’s definition 
o’ proper.” 

“ Definition !” repeated the marquis. 

“Is ’t ower lang a word, my lord?” 
asked Malcolm. 

The marquis only smiled. 

“ I ken what ye mean. It’s a strange 
word in a fisher-lad’s mou’, ye think. 
But what for should na a fisher-lad hae 
a smatterin’ o’ loagic, my lord? For 
Greek or Laitin there’s but sma’ oppor- 
tunity o’ exerceese in oor pairts ; but for 


MALCOLM. 


loagic, a fisher-body may aye baud his 
han’ in i’ that. He can aye be tryin’ ’t 
upo’ ’s wife, or ’s guid-mither, or upo’ ’s 
boat, or upo’ the fish whan they winna 
tak. Loagic wad save a heap o’ cursin’ 
an’ ill words — amo’ the fisher-fowk, I 
mean, my lord.” 

“ Have you been to college ?” 

" Na, my lord — the mair’s the pity ! 
But I’ve been to the school sin’ ever I 
can min’.” 

” Do they teach logic there ?” 

‘‘A kin’ o’ ’t. Mr. Graham sets us to 
try oor han’ whiles — jist to mak ’s a bit 
gleg [quick and keen), ye ken.” 

"You don’t mean you go to school 
still ?” 

" I dinna gang reg’lar ; but I gang as 
aften as Mr. Graham wants me to help 
him, an’ I aye gether something.” 

“ So it’s schoolmaster you are as well 
as fisherman ? Two strings to your bow ! 
— Who pays you for teaching ?” 

" Ow ! naebody. Wha wad pay me 
for that ?” 

"Why, the schoolmaster.” 

"Na, but that wad be an affront, my 
lord !” 

" How can you afford the time for 
nothing ?” 

"The time comes to little, compairt 
wi’ what Mr. Graham gies me i’ the lang 
forenichts — i’ the winter time, ye ken, 
my lord, whan the sea’s whiles ower 
contumahdous to be meddlet muckle 
wi’.” 

" But you have to support your grand- 
father.” 

" My gran’father wad be ill pleased to 
hear ye say ’t, my lord. He’s terrible 
independent ; an’ what wi’ his pipes, .,an’ 
his lamps, an’ his shop, he could keep ’s 
baith. It’s no muckle the likes o’ us 
wants. He winna let me gang far to the 
fishin’, so that I hae the mair time to 
read an’ gang to Mr. Graham.” 

As the youth spoke, the marquis eyed 
him with apparently growing interest. 

"But you haven’t told me whether 
your boat is a proper one,” said the lady. 

"Proper eneuch, mem, for what’s re- 
quired o’ her. She taks guid fish.” 

" But is it a proper boat for me to have 
a row in ?” 


53 

"No wi’ that goon on, mem, as I telled 
ye afore.” 

" The water won’t get in, will it ?” 

"No more than’s easy gotten oot 
again.” 

" Do you ever put up a sail ?” 

"Whiles — a wee bit o’ a lug-sail.” 

" Nonsense, Flory !” said the marquis. 
" I’ll see about it.’ Then turning to 
Malcolm — 

"You may go,” he said. "When I 
want you I will send for you.” 

Malcolm thought with himself that he 
had sent for him this time before he 
wanted him ; but he made his bow, and 
departed — not without disappointment, 
for he had expected the marquis to say 
something about his grandfather going 
to the House with his pipes, a request he 
would fain have carried to the old man 
to gladden his heart withal. 

Lord Lossie had been one of the boon 
companions of the prince of Wales — 
considerably higher in type, it is true, 
yet low enough to accept usage for law, 
and measure his obligation by the cus- 
tom of his peers : duty merely amounted 
to what was expected of him, and honor, 
the flitting shadow of the garment of 
truth, was his sole divinity. Still, he had 
a heart, and it would speak — so long at 
least as the object affecting it was pres- 
ent. But, alas ! it had no memory. Like 
the unjust judge, he might redress a 
wrong that cried to him, but out of sight 
and hearing it had for him no exist- 
ence. To a man he would not have told 
a deliberate lie — except, indeed, a wo- 
man was in the case ; but to women he 
had lied enough to sink the whole ship 
of fools. Nevertheless, had the accusing 
angel himself called him a liar, he would 
have instantly offered him his choice of 
weapons. 

There was in him by nature, however, 
a certain generosity which all the vice he 
had shared in had not quenched. Over- 
bearing, he was not yet too overbearing 
to appreciate a manly carriage, and had 
been pleased with what some would have 
considered the boorishne'ss of Malcolm’s 
behavior — such not perceiving that it 
had the same source as the true aristo- 
cratic bearing — namely, a certain un- 


54 


MALCOLM. 


selfish confidence which is the mother 
of dignity. 

He had of course been a spendthrift — 
and so much the better, being otherwise 
what he was ; for a cautious and frugal 
voluptuary is about the lowest style of 
man. Hence he had never been out of 
difficulties, and when, a year or so agone, 
he succeeded to his brother’s marquisate, 
he was, notwithstanding his enlarged in- 
come, far too much involved to hope any 
immediate rescue from them. His new 
property, however, would afford him a 
refuge from troublesome creditors ; there 
he might also avoid expenditure for a 
season, and perhaps rally the forces of a 
dissolute life ; the place was not new to 
him, having, some twenty years before, 
spent nearly twelve months there, of 
which time the recollections were not al- 
together unpleasant : weighing all these 
things he had mad^ up his mind, and 
here he was at Lossie House. 

The marquis was about fifty years of 
age, more worn than his years would ac- 
count for, yet younger than his years in 
expression, for his conscience had never 
bitten him very deep. He was middle- 
sized, broad-shouldered, but rather thin, 
with fine features of the aquiline Greek 
type, light-blue hazy eyes, and fair hair, 
slightly curling and streaked with gray. 
His manners were those of one polite for 
his own sake. To his remote inferiors 
he was kind — would even encourage 
them to liberties, but might in turn take 
greater with them than they might find 
agreeable. He was fond of animals — 
would sit for an hour stroking the head 
of Demon, his great Irish deerhound; 
but at other times would tease him to a 
wrath which touched the verge of dan- 
gerous. He was fond of practical jokes, 
and would not hesitate to indulge him- 
self even in such as were incompatible 
with any genuine refinement : the sort 
had been in vogue in his merrier days, 
and Lord Lossie had ever been one of 
the most fertile in inventing and loudest 
in enjoying them. For the rest, if he 
was easily enraged, he was readily ap- 
peased ; could drink a great deal, but 
was no drunkard ; and held as his creed 
that a God had probably made the world 


and set it going, but that he did not care 
a brass farthing, as he phrased it, how it 
went on, or what such an insignificant 
being as a man did or left undone in it. 
Perhaps he might amuse himself with it, 
he said, but he doubted it. As to men, 
he believed every man loved himself 
supremely, and therefore was in natural 
warfare with every other man. Con- 
cerning women he professed himself un- 
able to give a definite utterance of any 
sort — and yet, he would add, he had had 
opportunities. 

The mother of Florimel had died 
when she was a mere child, and from 
that time she had been at school until 
her father brought her away to share his 
fresh honors. She knew little, that little 
was not correct, and had it been, would 
have yet been of small value. At school 
she had been under many laws, and had 
felt their slavery : she was now in the 
third heaven of delight with her liberty. 
But the worst of foolish laws is, that 
when the insurgent spirit casts them off, 
it is but too ready to cast away with them 
the genial self-restraint which these fret- 
ting trammels have smothered beneath 
them. 

Her father regarded her as a child, of 
whom it was enough to require that she 
should keep out of mischief. He said 
to himself now and then that he must 
find a governess for her ; but as yet he 
had not begun to look for one. Mean- 
time he neither exercised the needful 
authority over her, nor treated her as a 
companion. His was a shallow nature, 
never very pleasantly conscious of itself 
except in .the whirl of excitement and 
the glitter of crossing lights : with a love- 
ly daughter by his side, he neither sought 
to search into her being, nor to aid its 
unfolding, but sat brooding over past 
pleasures,, or fancying others yet in store 
for him — lost in the dull flow of life 
along the lazy reach to whose mire its 
once tumultuous torrent had now de- 
scended. But, indeed, what could such 
a man have done for the education of a 
young girl ? How many of the qualities 
he understood and enjoyed in women 
could he desire to see developed in his 
daughter ? There was yet enough of the 


MALCOLM. 


55 


father in him to expect those qualities in 
her to which in other women he had 
been an insidious foe ; but had he not 
done what in him lay to destroy his right 
of claiming such from her ? 

So Lady Florimel was running wild, 
and enjoying it. As long as she made 
her appearance at meals, and looked 
happy, her father would give himself no 
trouble about her. How he himself man- 
aged to live in those first days without 
company — what he thought about or 
speculated upon, it were hard to say. 
All he could be said to do was to ride 
here and there over the estate with his 
steward, Mr. Crathie, knowing little and 
caring less about farming, or crops, or 
cattle. He had by this time, however, 
invited a few friends to visit him, and 
expected their arrival before long. 

“ How do you like this dull life, Flory ?” 
he said, as they walked up the garden to 
breakfast. 

“Dull, papa!” she returned. “You 
never were at a girls’ school, or you 
wouldn’t call this dull. It is the merriest 
life in the world. To go where you like, 
and have miles of room ! And such 
room ! It’s the loveliest place in the 
world, papa !’’ 

He smiled a small, satisfied smile, and 
stooping stroked his Demon. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

MEG PARTAN’S lamp. 

Malcolm went down the river-side, 
not over pleased with the marquis ; for, 
although unconscious of it as such, he 
had a strong feeling of personal dignity. 

As he threaded the tortuous ways of 
the Seaton toward his own door, he met 
sounds of mingled abuse and apology. 
Such were not infrequent in that quarter, 
for one of the women who lived there 
was a termagant, and the door of her 
cottage was generally open. She was 
known as Meg Partan. Her husband’s 
real name was of as little consequence 
in life as it is in my history, for almost 
everybody in the fishing villages of that 
coast was and is known by his to-7iame, 
or nickname, a device for distinction 


rendered absolutely necessary by the 
paucity of surnames occasioned by the 
persistent intermarriage of the fisher- 
folk. Partan is the Scotch for crab, but 
the immediate recipient of the name 
was one of the gentlest creatures in the 
place, 'and hence it had been surmised 
by some that, the gray mare being the 
better horse, the man was thus desig- 
nated from the crabbedness of his wife ; 
but the probability is he brought the ag- 
nomen with him from school, where 
many such apparently misfitting names 
are unaccountably generated. 

In the present case, however, the apol- 
ogies were not issuing as usual from the 
mouth of Davy Partan, but from that of 
the blind piper. Malcolm stood for a 
moment at the door to understand the 
matter of contention, and prepare him- 
self to interfere judiciously. 

“Gien ye suppose, piper, ’at ye’re pey- 
ed to drive fowk oot o’ their beds at sic 
hoors as yon, it’s time the toon-cooncil 
was informed o’ yer mistak,’’ said Meg 
Partan, with emphasis on the last syllable. 

“ Ta coot peoples up in ta town are not . 
half so hart upon her as you. Mistress 
Partan,’’ insinuated poor Duncan, who, 
knowing himself in fault, was humble ; 
“and it’s tere tat she’s paid,’’ he added, 
with a bridling motion, “and not town 
here pelow.’’ 

“Dinna ye glorifee yersel’ to suppose 
there’s a fisher, lat alane a fisher’s wife, 
in a’ the haill Seaton ’at wad lippen 
[trust] till an auld haiveril like you to hae 
them up i’ the morning’ ! Haith ! I was 
oot o’ my bed hoors or I hard the skirlin’ 
o’ your pipes. Troth ! I ken weel hoo 
muckle ower ear’ yer was ! But what 
fowk taks in han’, fowk sud put oot o’ 
han’ in a proper mainner, and no mis- 
guggle ’t a’thegither like yon. An’ for 
what they say i’ the toon, there’s Mis- 
tress Catanach — ’’ 

“Mistress Catanach is a paad ’oman,’’ 
said Duncan. 

“ I wad advise you, piper, to baud a 
quaiet sough aboot her. She's no to be 
meddlet wi’. Mistress Catanach, I can 
tell ye. Gien ye anger her, it’ll be the 
waur for ye. The neist time ye hae a 
lyin’ in, she’ll be raxin’ [reachmg] ye a 


56 


MALCOLM. 


hairless pup, or, ’deed, maybe a stan’ o’ 
bagpipes, as the produck.” 

“Her nain sel’ will not pe requiring 
her sairvices. Mistress Partan ; she’ll pe 
leafing tat to you, if you’ll excuse me,” 
said Duncan. 

“ ’Deed, ye’re richt there ! An auld 
speldin’ [dried haddock) like you ! Ha ! 
ha ! ha !” 

Malcolm judged it time to interfere, 
and stepped into the cottage. Duncan 
was seated in the darkest corner of the 
room, with an apron over his knees, oc- 
cupied with a tin lamp. He had taken 
out the wick and laid its flat tube on the 
hearth, had emptied the oil into a saucer, 
and was now rubbing the lamp vigor- 
ously : cleanliness rather than brightness 
must have been what he sought to pro- 
duce. 

Malcolm’s instinct taught him to side 
so far with the dame concerning Mrs. 
Catanach, and thereby turn the torrent 
away from his grandfather. 

“ ’Deed ye’re richt there. Mistress Find- 
lay !” he said. She' ^ no to be meddlet 
wi’. She’s no mowse [safe)." 

Malcolm was a favorite with Meg, as 
with all the women of the place ; hence 
she did not even start in resentment at 
his sudden appearance, but, turning to 
Duncan, exclaimed victoriously — 

“ Hear till yer ain oye ! He’s a laad 
o’ sense!” 

“Ay, hear to him!” rejoined the old 
man with pride. “My Malcolm will al- 
ways pe speaking tat which will pe worth 
ta hearing with ta ears. Poth of you 
and me will pe knowing ta Mistress Cat- 
anach pretty well — eh, Malcolm, my son ? 
We’ll not pe trusting her ferry too much 
— will we, my son ?” 

“No a hair, daddy,” returned Mal- 
' colm. 

“She’s a dooms clever wife, though ; 
an’ ane ’at ye may lippen till i’ the w’y 
o’ her ain callin’,” said Meg Partan, 
whose temper had improved a little under 
the influence of the handsome youth’s 
presence and cheery speech. 

“She’ll not pe toubting it,” responded 
Duncan ; “ put, ach ! ta voman ’ll be 
hafing a crim feesage and a fearsome 
eye !” 


Like all the blind, he spoke as if he 
saw perfectly. 

“Weel, I hae hard fowk say ’at ye 
bude (behoved) to hae the second sicht,” 
said Mrs. Findlay, laughing rudely; 
“but wow! it Stan’s ye in sma’ service 
gien that be a’ it comes till. She’s a 
guid-natur’d, sonsy -luikin’ wife as ye 
wad see ; an’ for her een, they’re jist sic 
likes mine ain. — Haena ye near dune 
wi’ that lamp yet ?” 

“The week of it ’ll pe. shust a leetle 
out of orter,” answered the old man. 
“ Ta pairns has peen pulling it up with a 
peen from ta top, and not putting it in 
at ta hole for ta purpose. And she’ll pe 
thinking you’ll pe cleaning off ta purnt 
part with a peen yourself, ma’am, and 
not with ta pair of scissors she tolt you 
of. Mistress Partan.” 

“Gae ’wa’ wi’ yer nonsense!” cried 
Meg. “ Daur ye say I dinna ken hoo 
to trim an uilyie lamp wi’ the best 
blin’ piper ever cam frae the bare-leggit 
Heelans ?” 

“A choke’s a choke, ma’am,” said 
Duncan, rising with dignity ; “ put for a 
laty to make a choke of a man’s pare 
leks is not ta propriety !” 

“ Oot o’ my hoose wi’ ye !” screamed 
the she-Partan. “ Wad ye threep [msist) 
upo’ me onything I said was less nor 
proaper. ’At / sud say what wadna 
Stan’ the licht as weel’s the bare houghs 
o’ only heelan rascal ’at ever lap a law- 
lan’ dyke !” 

“Hoot toot! Mistress Findlay,” inter- 
posed Malcolm, as his grandfather strode 
from the door; “ye maunna forget ’at 
he’s auld an’ blin’ ; an’ a’ heelan’ fowk’s 
some kittle (touchy) aboot their legs.” 

“Deil shochle them!” exclaimed the 
Partaness ; “what care I for ’s legs ?” 

Duncan had brought the germ of this 
ministry of light from his native High- 
lands, where he had practiced it in his 
own house, no one but himself being 
permitted to clean, or fill, or indeed, 
trim the lamp. How first this came 
about, I do not believe the old man 
himself knew. But he must have had 
some feeling of a call to the work ; for 
he had not been a month in Portlossie, 
before he had installed himself in several 


MALCOLM, 


57 


families as the genius of their lamps, and 
he gradually extended the relation until 
it comprehended almost all the houses 
n the village. 

It was strange and touching to see the 
sightless man thus busy about light for 
others. A marvelous symbol of faith he 
was — not only believing in sight, but in 
the mysterious, and to him altogether 
unintelligible, means by which others 
saw ! In thus lending his aid to a faculty 
in which he had no share, he himself fol- 
lowed the trail of the garments of Light, 
stooping ever and anon to lift and bear 
her skirts. He haunted the steps of the 
unknown Power, and flitted about the 
walls of her temple, as we mortals haunt 
the borders of the immortal land, know- 
ing nothing of what lies behind the un- 
seen veil, yet believing in an unrevealed 
grandeur. Or shall we say he stood like 
the forsaken merman, who, having no 
soul to be saved, yet lingered and listen- 
ed outside the prayer-echoing church ? 
Only old Duncan had got farther : though 
he saw not a glimmer of the glory, he 
yet asserted his part and lot in it, by the 
aiding of his fellows to that of which he 
lacked the very conception himself. He 
was a doorkeeper in the house, yea, by 
faith the blind man became even a priest 
in the temple of Light. 

Even when his grandchild was the 
merest baby, he would neyer allow the 
gloaming to deepen into night without 
kindling for his behoof the brightest and 
cleanest of train-oil lamps. The women 
who at first looked in to offer their ser- 
vices, would marvel at the trio of blind 
man, babe, and burning lamp, and some 
would expostulate with him on the need- 
less waste. But neither would he listen 
to their words, nor accept their offered 
assistance in dressing or undressing the 
child. The sole manner in which he 
would consent to avail himself of their 
willingness to help him, was to leave the 
baby in charge of this or that neighbor 
while he went his rounds with the bag- 
pipes : when he went lamp-cleaning he 
always took him along with him. 

By this change of guardians Malcolm 
was a great gainer, for thus he came to 
be surreptitiously nursed by a baker’s 


dozen of mothers, who had a fund of 
not very wicked amusement in the lam- 
entations of the old man over his baby’s 
refusal of nourishment, and his fears 
that he was pining away. But while 
they honestly declared that a healthier 
child had never been seen in Portlossie, 
they were compelled to conceal the too 
satisfactory reasons of the child’s fastidi- 
ousness ; for they were persuaded that 
the truth would only make Duncan ter- 
ribly jealous, and set him on contriving 
how at once to play his pipes and carry 
his baby. 

He had certain days for visiting cer- 
tain houses, and cleaning the lamps in 
them. The housewives had at first grant- 
ed him as a privilege the indulgence of 
his whim, and as such alone had Dun- 
can regarded it ; but by and by, when 
they found their lamps burn so much 
better from being properly attended to, 
they began to make him some small re- 
turn ; and at length it became the cus- 
tom with every housewife who accepted 
his services, to pay him a half-penny a 
week during the winter months for clean- 
ing her lamp. He never asked for it ; 
if payment was omitted, never even hint- 
ed at it ; received what was given him 
thankfully ; and was regarded with kind- 
ness, and, indeed, respect, by all. Even 
Mrs. Partan, as he alone called her, was 
his true friend : no intensity of friendship 
could have kept her from scolding. I 
believe if we could thoroughly dissect the 
natures of scolding women, we should 
find them in general not at all so un- 
friendly as they are unpleasant. 

A small trade in oil arose from his 
connection with the lamps, and was 
added to the list of his general dealings. 
The fisher-folk made their own oil, but 
sometimes it would run short, and then 
recourse was had to Duncan’s little store, 
prepared by himself of the best, chiefly, 
now, from the livers of fish caught by 
his grandson. With so many sources 
of income, no one wondered at his 
getting on. Indeed, no one would have 
been surprised to hear, long before 
Malcolm had begun to earn anything, 
that the old man had already laid by 
a trifle. 


58 


MALCOLM. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE SLOPE OF THE DUNE. 

Looking at Malcolm’s life from the 
point of his own consciousness, and not 
from that of the so-called world, it was 
surely pkasant enough ! Innocence, 
devotion to another, health, pleasant 
/ labor, with an occasional shadow of dan- 
ger to arouse the energies, leisure, love 
of reading, a lofty-minded friend, and, 
above all, a supreme presence, visible to 
his heart in the meeting of vaulted sky 
and outspread sea, and felt at moments 
in any waking wind that cooled his 
glowing cheek and breathed into him 
anew of the breath of life, — lapped in 
such conditions, bathed in such influ- 
ences, the youth’s heart was swelling like 
a rosebud ready to burst into blossom. 

But he had never yet felt the imme- 
diate presence of woman in any of her 
closer relations. He had never known 
mother or sister ; and, although his voice 
always assumed a different tone and his 
manner grew more gentle in the pres- 
ence of a woman, old or young, he 
had found little individually attractive 
amongst the fisher-girls. There was not 
much in their circumstances to bring 
out the finer influences of womankind 
in them : they had rough usage, hard 
work at the curing and carrying of fish 
and the drying of nets, little education, 
and but poor religious instruction. At the 
same time any failure in what has come 
to be specially called virtue was all but 
unknown amongst them ; and the pro- 
found faith in women, and correspond- 
ing worship of everything essential to 
womanhood which essentially belonged 
to a nature touched to fine issues, had as 
yet met with no 'check. It had never 
come into Malcolm’s thought that there 
were live women capable of impurity. 
Mrs. Catanach was the only woman he 
had ever looked upon with dislike — and 
that dislike had generated no more than 
the vaguest suspicion. Let a woman’s 
faults be all that he had ever known in 
woman, he yet could look on her with 
reverence — and the very heart of rever- 
ence is love ; whence it may be plainly 
seen that Malcolm’s nature was at once 
prepared for much delight, and exposed 


to much suffering. It followed that all 
the women of his class loved and trusted 
him ; and hence in part it came that, 
absolutely free of arrogance, he was yet 
confident in the presence of women. 
The tradesmen’s daughters in the upper 
town took pains to show him how high 
above him they were, and women of 
better position spoke to him with a kind 
condescension that made him feel the 
gulf that separated them ; but to one and 
all he spoke with the frankness of manly 
freedom. 

But he had now arrived at that season 
when, in the order of things, a man is 
compelled to have at least a glimmer of 
the life which consists in sharing life 
with another. When once, through the 
thousand unknown paths of creation, the 
human being is so far divided from God 
that his individuality is secured, it has 
become yet more needful that the crust 
gathered around him in the process 
should be broken ; and the love between 
man and woman, arising from a differ- 
ence deep in the heart of God, and es- 
sential to the very being of each — for by 
no words can I express my scorn of the 
evil fancy that the distinction between 
them is solely or even primarily physical 
— is one of His most powerful forces for 
blasting the wall of separation, and, first 
step toward the universal harmony, of 
twain making one. That love should be 
capable of ending in such vermiculate 
results as too often appear, is no more 
against the loveliness of the divine idea, 
than that the forms of man and woman, 
the spirit gone from them, should degen- 
erate to such things as may not be look- 
ed upon. There is no plainer sign of 
the need of a God, than the possible fate 
of Love. The celestial Cupido may soar 
aloft on seraph wings that assert his 
origin, or fall down on the belly of a 
snake and creep to hell. 

But Malcolm was not of the stuff of 
which coxcombs are made, and had not 
begun to think even of the abyss that 
separated Lady Florimel and himself — 
an abyss like that between star and star, 
across which stretches no mediating air 
— a blank and blind space. He felt her 
presence only as that of a being to be 


MALCOLM. 


worshiped, to be heard with rapture, 
and yet addressed without fear. 

Though not greatly prejudiced in favor 
of books. Lady Florimel had burrowed 
a little in the old library at Lossie House, 
and had chanced on the Faerie Qtiee7ie. 
She had often come upon the name of 
the author in books of extracts, and now, 
turning over its leaves, she found her 
own. Indeed, where else could her 
mother have found the name Florimel? 
Her curiosity was roused, and she re- 
solved — no light undertaking — to read 
the poem through, and see who and 
what the lady, Florimel, was. Notwith- 
standing the difficulty she met with at 
first, she had persevered, and by this time 
it had become easy enough. The copy 
she had found was in small volumes, of 
which she now carried one about with 
her wherever she wandered ; and making 
her first acquaintance with the sea and 
the poem together, she soon came to 
fancy that she could not fix her attention 
on the book without the sound of the 
waves for an accompaniment to the verse 
— although the gentler noise of an ever- 
flowing stream would have better suited 
the nature of Spenser’s rhythm ; for in- 
deed, he had composed the greater part 
of the poem with such a sound in his 
ears, and there are indications in the 
poem itself that he consciously took the 
river as his chosen analogue after which 
to model the flow of his verse. 

It was a sultiy afternoon, and Florimel 
lay on the seaward side of the dune, 
buried in her book. The sky was foggy 
with heat, and the sea lay dull, as if op- 
pressed by the superincumbent air, and 
leaden in hue, as if its color had been 
destroyed by the sun. The tide was 
rising slowly, with a muffled and sleepy 
murmur on the sand ; for here were no 
pebbles to impart a hiss to the wave as 
it rushed up the bank, or to go softly 
hurtling down the slope with it as it 
sank. As she read, Malcolm was walk- 
ing toward her along the top of the dune, 
but not until he came almost above 
where she lay, did she hear his step in 
the soft quenching sand. 

. She nodded kindly, and he descended, 
approaching her. 


59 

“Did ye want me, my leddy?” he 
asked. 

“No,” she answered. 

“ I wasna sure whether ye noddit ’cause 
ye wantit me, or no,” said Malcolm, and 
turned to reascend the dune. 

“Where are you going now?” she 
asked. 

“Ow! nae gait in particular. I jist 
cam oot to see hoo things war linkin’.” 

“What things ?” 

“ Ow ! jist the lift {sLj'), an’ the sea, 
an’ sic generals.” 

That Malcolm’s delight in the pres- 
ences of Nature — I sdcy presences, as dis- 
tinguished from forms and colors and 
all analyzed sources of her influences — 
should have already become a conscious 
thing to himself, requires to account for 
it the fact that his master, Graham, was 
already under the influences of Words- 
worth, whom he had hailed as a Crabbe 
that had burst his shell and spread the 
wings of an eagle : the virtue passed 
from him to his pupil. 

“ I won’t detain you from such import- 
ant business,” said Lady Florimel, and 
dropped her eyes on her book. 

“ Gien ye want my company, my led- 
dy, I can luik aboot me jist as weel here 
as ony ither gait,” said Malcolm. 

And as he spoke, he gently stretched 
himself on the dune, about three yards 
aside and lower down. Florimel looked 
half amused and half annoyed, but she 
had brought it on herself, and would 
punish him only by dropping her eyes 
again on her book, and keeping silent. 
She had come to the Florimel of snow. 

Malcolm lay and looked at her for a 
few moments pondering ; then fancying 
he had found the cause of her offence, 
rose, and, passing to the other side of 
her, again lay down, but at a still more 
respectful distance. 

“ Why do you move ?” she asked, 
without looking up. 

“’Cause there’s jist a possible- air o’ 
win’ frae the nor’-east.” 

“And you want me to shelter you from 
it ?” said Lady Florimel. 

“Na, na, my leddy,” returned Mal- 
colm, laughing; “for as bonny’s ye are, 
ye wad be but sma’ scoug [shelter]." 


6o 


MALCOLM. 


“Why did you move, then,” persisted 
the girl, who understood what he said 
just about half. 

“Weel, my leddy, ye see it’s het, an’ 
I’m aye amarjg the fish mair or less, an’ 
I didna ken ’at I was to hae the honor 
o’ sittin’ doon aside ye ; sae I thocht ye 
was maybe smellin’ the fish. It’s healthy 
eneuch, but some fowk disna like it ; an’ 
for a’ that I ken, you gran’ fowk’s senses 
may be mair ready to scunner {take of- 
fence) than oors. ’Deed, my leddy, we 
wadna need to be particlar whiles, or it 
wad be the waur for ’s !’’ 

Simple as it was, the explanation 
served to restore her equanimity, dis- 
turbed by what had seemed his pre- 
sumption in lying down in her presence : 
she saw that she had mistaken the ac- 
tion. The fact was, that, concluding 
from her behavior she had something to 
say to him, but was not yet at leisure for 
him, he had lain down, as a loving dog 
might, to await her time. It was devo- 
tion, not coolness. To remain standing 
before her would have seemed a demand 
on her attention ; to lie down was to 
withdraw and wait. But Florimel, al- 
though pleased, was only the more in- 
clined to torment — a peculiarity of dis- 
position which she inherited from her 
father: she bowed her face once more 
over her book, and read through three 
whole stanzas, without, however^ under- 
standing a single phrase in them, before 
she spoke. Then looking up, and re- 
garding for a moment the youth who lay 
watching her with the eyes of the ser- 
vants in the psalm, she said — 

“ Well ? What are you waiting for ?’’ 

“ I thocht ye wantit me, my leddy ! I 
beg yer pardon,’’ answered Malcolm, 
springing to his feet, and turning to 

go- 

“ Do you ever read ?’’ she asked. 

“Aften that,’’ replied Malcolm, turn- 
ing again, and standing stock-still. “An’ 
I like best to read jest as yer leddyship’s 
readin’ the noo, lyin’ o’ the san’-hill, 
wi’ the haill sea afore me,’ an’ nothing 
atween me an’ the icebergs but the wat- 
ter an’ the stars an’ a wheen islands. 
It’s like readin’ wi’ fower een, that ?’’ 

“ And what do you read on such occa- 


sions ?’’ carelessly drawled his perse- 
cutor. 

“ Whiles ae thing an’ whiles anither — 
whiles onything I can lay my ban’s upo’. 
I like traivels an’ sic like weel eneuch ; 
an’ history, gien it be na ower dry-like. 
I div not like sermons, an’ there’s mair 
o’ them in Portlossie than onything ither. 
Mr. Graham — that’s the schoolmaister — 
has a gran’ library, but its maist Laitin 
an’ Greek, an’ though I like the Laitin 
weel, it’s no what I wad read i’ the face 
o’ the sea. When ye ’re in dreid o’ 
wantin’ a dictionar’, that spiles a’.’’ 

“Can you read Latin, then ?’’ 

“ Ay : what for no, my leddy ? I can 
read Virgil middlin’ ; and Horace’s Ars 
Poetica, the whilk Mr. Graham says is 
no its richt name ava, but jist Epistola 
ad Pisones ; for gien they bude to gie ’t 
anither, it sud ha’ been Ars Drainatica. 
But leddies dinna care aboot sic things.’’ 

“You gentlemen give us no chance. 
You won’t teach us.’’ 

“ Noo, my leddy, dinna begin to mak’ 
ghem o’ me, like my lord. I cud ill bide 
it frae him, an’ gien ye tak till ’t as weel, 
I maun jist hand oot o’ yer gait. I’m 
nae gentleman, an’ hae ower muckle 
respeck for what becomes a gentleman 
to be pleased at being ca’d ane. But as 
for the Laitin, I’ll be prood to instruck 
her leddyship whan ye please.’’ 

“ I’m afraid I’ve no great wish to 
learn,’’ said Florimel. 

“ I daur say not,’’ said Malcolm quiet- 
ly, and again addressed himself to go. 

“ Do you like novels ?’’ asked the girl. 

“I never saw a novelle. There’s no 
ane amo’ a’ Mr. Graham’s buiks, an’ I 
s’ warran’ there’s full twa hunner o’ 
them. I dinna believe there’s a single 
novelle in a’ Portlossie.’’ 

“ Don’t be too sure : there are a good 
many in our library.’’ 

“ I hadna the presumption, my leddy, 
to coont the Hoose in Portlossie. — Ye ’ll 
hae a sicht o’ buiks up there, no ?’’ 

“ Have you never been in the library ?’’ 

“I never set fut i’ the hoose — ’cep’ i’ 
the kitchie, an’ ance or twise steppin’ 
across the ha’ frae the ae door to the 
tither. I wad fain see what kin’ o’ a 
place great fowk like you bides in, an’ 


MALCOLM. 


6i 


what kin’ o’ things, buiks an’ a’, ye hae 
aboot ye. It’s no easy for the like o’ 
huz ’at has but a but an’ a ben [outer 
and inner room), to unnerstan’ hoo ye 
fill sic a muckle place as yon. I wad be 
aye i’ the libbrary, I think. But,” he 
went on, glancing involuntarily at the 
dainty little foot that peered from under 
her dress, "yer leddyship’s sae licht-fittit, 
ye’ll be ower the haill dwallin’, like a 
wee bird in a muckle cage. Whan I 
want room, I like it wantin’ wa’s.” * 

. Once more he was oh the point of 
going, but once more a word detained 
him. 

” Do you ever read poetry ?” 

"Ay, sometimes — whan it’s auld.” 

“One would think you were talking 
about wine ! Does age improve poetry 
as well ?” 

" I ken naething aboot wine, my leddy. 
Miss Horn gae me a glaiss the ither day, 
an’ it tastit weel, but whether it was 
nierum or mixtum, I couldna tell mair 
nor a haddick. Doobtless age does gar 
poetry smack a wee better; but I said 
auld only ’cause there’s sae little new 
poetry that I care aboot comes my gait. 
Mr. Graham’s unco ta’en wi Maister 
Wordsworth — no an ill name for a poet ; 
do ye ken onything aboot him, my 
leddy?” 

" I never heard of him.” 

“ I wadna gie an auld Scots ballant for 
a barrowfu’ o’ his. There’s gran’ bits 
here an’ there, nae doobt, but it’s ower 
mim-mou’ed for me.” 

"What do you mean by that ?” 

" It’s ower saft an’ sliddery-like i’ yer 
mou’, my leddy.” 

"What sort do you like, then ?” 

"I like Milton weel. Ye get a fine 
mou’fu’ o’ hhn. I dinna like the verse 
’at ye can murle [crumble) oot atween 
yer lips an’ yer teeth. I like the verse 
’at ye maun open yer mou’ weel to 
lat gang. Syne it’s worth yer while, 
whether ye unnerstan’ ’t or no.” 

" I don’t see how you can say that.” 

"Jist hear, my leddy! Here’s a bit I 
cam upo’ last nicht : 

His volant touch. 

Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 

Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue. 


Hear till ’t ! It’s gran’ — even though ye 
dinna ken what it means a bit.” 

" I do know what it means,” said Flo- 
rimel. "Let me see: volant means — 
what does volant mean ?” 

" It means fieem' , I suppose.” 

"Well, he means some musician or 
other.” 

"Of coorse ; it maun be Jubal. — I ken 
a’ the words but fugue ; though I canna 
tell what business instinct proportio7is 
hae there.” 

“ It’s describing how the man’s fingers, 
playing a fugue — on the organ, I sup- 
pose — ” 

“A fugue ’ll be some kin’ o’ a tune, 
than ? That casts a heap o’ licht on’t, 
my leddy. — I never saw an organ : what 
is ’t like ?” 

"Something like a pianoforte.” 

" But I never saw ane o’ them, either. 
It’s ill makin’ things a’thegither oot o’ 
yer ain heid.” 

"Well, it’s played with the fingers — 
like this,” said Florimel. "And the 
fugue is a kind of piece where one part 
pursues the other — ” 

“An’ syne,” cried Malcolm eagerly, 
"that ane turns roon’ an’ rins efter the 
first ; — ^that ’ll be '‘fled and pursued trans- 
verse.' I hae’t 1 I hae’t I See, my led- 
dy, what it is to hae sic schoolin’, wi’ 
music an’ a’ 1 The proportions — that’s 
the relation o’ the notes to ane anither ; 

fugue — that comes frae fugere, to flee 
— 'fled and pursued transverse the reso- 
nant fugue ’ — the tane rinnin’ efter the 
tither, roon’ an’ roon’. Ay, I hae’t noo 1 
— Resonant — that’s echoing or resound- 
ing. But what’s instmct, my leddy ? It 
maun be an adjective. I’m thinkin’.” 

Although the modesty of Malcolm had 
led him to conclude the girl immeasur- 
ably his superior in learning because she 
could tell him what a fugue was, he soon 
found she could help him no further, for 
she understood scarcely anything about 
grammar, and her vocabulary was limit- 
ed enough. Not a doubt interfered, how- 
ever, with her acceptance of the imputed 
superiority ; for it is as easy for some to 
assume as it is for others to yield. 

"I hae’t! It is an adjective,” cried 
Malcolm, after a short pause of thought. 


62 


MALCOLM. 


“ It’s the touch that’s instinct. But I [ 
fancy there sud be a comma efter instinct. 
— His fingers were sae used till ’t that 
they could ’maist do the thing o’ them- 
sel’s. — Isna ’t lucky, my leddy, that I 
thocht o’ sayin’ ’t ower to you ? I’ll read 
the buik frae the beginnin’ — it’s the neist 
to the last, I think — jist to come upo’ the 
twa lines i’ their ain place, ohn their ex- 
peckin’ me like, an’ see hoo gran’ they 
soon’ whan a body unnerstan’s them. 
Thank ye, my leddy.” 

“ I suppose you read Milton to your 
grandfather ?” 

‘‘Ay, sometimes — i’ the lang fore- 
nichts.” 

‘‘What do you mean by the fore- 
nights f" 

‘‘I mean efter it’s dark an’ afore ye 
gang to yer bed. — He likes the battles 
o’ the angels best. As sune ’s it comes 
to ony fechtin’, up he gets, an’ gangs 
stridin’ aboot the flure ; an’ whiles he 
maks a claucht at ’s claymore ; an’ faith ! 
ance he maist cawed afif my heid wi’ ’t, 
for he had made a mistak about whaur I 
was sittin’.” 

‘‘ What’s a claymore f" 

‘‘A muckle heelan’ braidswoord, my 
leddy. Clay frae gladius, verra likly ; 
an’ more\ the Gaelic {ox great : claymore, 
great sword. Blin’ as my gran’father is, 
ye wad sweer he had fochten in ’s day, 
gien ye hard hoo he’ll gar ’t whurr an’ 
whustle aboot ’s heid as gien ’t was a bit 
lath o’ wud.” 

‘‘But that’s very dangerous,” said Flo- 
rimel, something aghast at the recital. 

‘‘Ow, ay !” assented Malcolm, indiffer- 
ently. — ‘‘ Gien ye wad luik in, my leddy, 

I wad lat ye see his claymore, an’ his 
dirk, an’ his skene dhu, an’ a’.” 

‘‘ I don’t think I could venture. He’s too 
dreadful ! I should be terrified at him.” 

‘‘ Dreidfu’ ! my leddy ? He’s the quai- 
etest, kin’liest auld man ! — that is, providit 
ye say naething for a Cawmill, or agen 
ony ither hielanman. Ye see he comes 
o’ Glenco, an’ the Cawmills are jist a 
hate till him — specially Cawmill o’ Glen- 
lyon, wha was the warst o’ them a’. Ye 
sud hear him tell the story till ’s pipes, 
my leddy ! It’s gran’ to hear him ! An’ 
the poetry a’ his ain !” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE STORM. 

There came a blinding flash and a 
roar through the leaden air, followed by 
heavy drops mixed with huge hailstones. 
At the flash, Florimel gave a cry and 
half rose to her feet, but at the thunder, 
fell, as if stunned by the noise, on the 
sand. As if with a bound, Malcolm was 
by her side, but when she perceived his 
terror, she smiled, and laying hold of his 
hand, sprung to her feet. 

‘‘Come, come,” she cried; and still 
holding his hand, hurried up the dune, 
and down the other side of it. Malcolm 
accompanied her step for step, strongly 
tempted, however, to snatch her up, and 
run for the bored craig : he could not 
think why she made for the road — high 
on an unscalable embankment, with the 
park-wall on the other side. But she 
ran straight for a door in the embank- 
ment itself, dark between two buttresses, 
which, never having seen it open, he had 
not thought of. For a moment she stood 
panting before it, while with trembling 
hand she put a key in the lock ; the next 
she pushed open the creaking door and 
entered. As she turned to take out the 
key, she saw Malcolm yards away in the 
middle of the road and in a cataract of 
rain, which seemed to have with difficul- 
ty suspended itself only until the lady 
should be under cover. He stood with 
his bonnet in his hand, watching for a 
farewell glance. 

‘‘Why don’t you come in?” she said 
impatiently. 

He was beside her in a moment. 

‘‘ I didna ken ye wad let me in,” he 
said. 

‘‘I wouldn’t have you drowned,” she 
returned, shutting the door. 

‘‘ Droont !” he repeated. ‘‘ It wad tak 
a hantle [great deal) to droon me. I 
stack to the boddom o’ a whumled boat 
a haill nicht when I was but fifeteen.” 

They stood in a tunnel which passed 
under the road, affording immediate 
communication between the park and 
the shore. The farther end of it was 
dark with trees. The upper half of the 
door by which they had entered was a 
wooden grating, for the admission of 


MALCOLM. 


light, and through it they were now gaz- 
ing, though they could see little but the 
straight lines of almost perpendicular 
rain that scratched out the colors of the 
landscape. The sea was troubled, al- 
though no wind blew ; it heaved as with 
an inward unrest. But suddenly there 
was a great broken sound somewhere in 
the air ; and the next moment a storm 
came tearing over the face of the sea, 
covering it with blackness innumerably 
rent into spots of white. Presently it 
struck the shore, and a great rude blast 
came roaring through the grating, carry- 
ing with it a sheet of rain, and, catching 
Florimel’s hair, sent it streaming wildly 
out behind her. 

“ Dinna ye think, my leddy,” said 
Malcolm, “ye had better mak for the 
hoose ? What wi’ the win’ an’ the weet 
thegither, ye’ll be gettin’ yer deith o’ 
cauld. I s’ gang wi’ ye sae far, gien 
ye’ll alloo me, jist to hand it ohn blawn 
ye awa’.’’ 

The wind suddenly fell, and his last 
words echoed loud in the vaulted way. 
For a moment it grew darker in the 
silence, and then a great flash carried 
the world away with it, and left nothing 
but blackness behind. A roar of thun- 
der followed, and even while it yet bel- 
lowed, a white face flitted athwart the 
grating, and a voice of agony shrieked 
aloud : 

“ I dinna ken whaur it comes frae !’’ 

Florimel grasped Malcolm’s arm : the 
face had passed close to hers — only the 
grating between, and the cry cut through 
the thunder like a knife. 

Instinctively, almost unconsciously, he 
threw his arm around her, to shield her 
^ from her own terror. 

“Dinna be fleyt, my leddy,” he said 
“ It’s naething but the mad laird. He’s 
a quaiet cratur eneuch, only he disna 
ken whaur he comes frae — he disna ken 
whaur onything comes frae — an’ he can- 
na bide it. But he wadna hurt leevin’ 
cratur, the laird.” 

“What a dreadful face !” said the girl, 
shuddering. 

“It’s no an ill-faured face,” said Mal- 
colm, “ only the storm’s frichtit him by 
ord’nar, an’ it’s unco ghaistly the noo.” 


63 

“ Is there nothing to be done for him ?” 
she said compassionately. 

“No upo’ this side the grave, I doobt, 
my leddy,” answered Malcolm. 

Here, coming to herself, the girl be- 
came aware of her support, and laid her 
hand on Malcolm’s to remove his arm. 
He obeyed instantly, and she said 
nothing. 

“There was some speech,” he went on 
hurriedly, with a quaver in his voice, “o’ 
pittin’ him intill the asylum at Aberdeen, 
an’ noo lattin’ him scoor the queentry 
this gait, they said ; but it wad hae been 
sheer cruelty, for the cratur likes nae- 
thing sae weel as rinnin’ aboot, an’ does 
no mainner o’ hurt. A verra bairn can 
guide him. An’ he has jist as guid a 
richt to the leeberty God gies him as ony 
man alive, an’ mair nor a hantle [more 
than many)." 

“ Is nothing known about him ?” 

“A’ thing’s known aboot him, my led- 
dy, ’at ’s known aboot the lave {rest) o’ 
’s. His father was the laird o’ Gersefell 
— an’ for that maitter he’s laird himsel’ 
noo. But they say he’s taen sic a scun- 
ner {disgust) at his mither, that he canna 
bide the verra word o’ mither : he jist 
cries oot whan he hears ’t.” 

“ It seems clearing,” said Florimel. 

“I doobt it’s only handin’ up for a 
wee,” returned Malcolm, after surveying 
as much of the sky as was visible through 
the bars; “but I do think ye had better 
rin for the hoose, my leddy. I s’ jist fol- 
low ye, a feow yairds ahin’, till I see ye 
safe. Dinna ye be feared — I s’ tak guid 
care : I wadna hae ye seen i’ the com- 
pany o’ a fisher-lad like me.” ' 

There was no doubting the perfect 
simplicity with which this was said, and 
the girl took no exception. They left 
the tunnel, and skirting the bottom of 
the little hill on which stood the temple 
of the winds, were presently in the midst 
of a young wood, through which a grav- 
eled path led toward the House. But 
they had not gone far ere a blast of 
wind, more violent than any that had 
preceded it, smote the wood, and the 
trees, young larches and birches and 
sycamores, bent streaming before it. 
Lady Florimel turned to see where Mai- 


64 


MALCOLM. 


colm was, and her hair went from her 
like a Maenad’s, while her garments flew 
fluttering and straining, as if struggling 
to carry her off. She had never in her 
life before been out in a storm, and she 
found the battle joyously exciting. The 
roaring of the wind in the trees was 
grand ; and what seemed their terrified 
struggles while they bowed and writhed 
and rose but to bow again, as in mad 
effort to unfix their earth-bound roots 
and escape, took such sympathetic hold 
of her imagination, that she flung out 
her arms, and began to dance and whirl 
as if herself the genius of the storm. 
Malcolm, who had been some thirty 
paces behind, was with her in a moment. 

“ Isn’t it splendid ?” she cried. 

“ It blaws weel — verra near as weel ’s 
my daddy,” said Malcolm, enjoying it 
quite as much as the girl. 

‘‘ How dare you make game of such a 
grand uproar?” said Florimel with supe- 
riority. 

“ Mak ghem o’ a blast o’ win’ by com- 
parin’ ’t to my gran’father !” exclaimed 
Malcolm. ‘‘ Hoot, my leddy ! it’s a 
coamplement to the biggest blast ’at 
ever blew to be compairt till an auld 
man like him. I’m ower used to them 
to min’ them muckle mysel’, ’cep’ to 
fecht w'i’ them. But whan I watch the 
sea-goos dartin’ like arrow-heids throu’ 
the win’, I sometimes think it maun be 
gran’ for the angels to caw aboot great 
flags o’ wings in a mortal warstle wi’ sic 
a hurricane as this.” 

‘‘I don’t understand you one bit,” said 
Lady Florimel petulantly. 

As she spoke, she went on, but the 
blast having abated, Malcolm lingered, 
to place a proper distance between them. 

“You needn’t keep so far behind,” 
said Florimel, looking back. 

“As yer leddyship pleases,” answered 
Malcolm, and was at once by her side. 
“ I’ll gang till ye tell me to stan’. — Eh, 
sae different ’s ye luik frae the ither 
mornin’ !” 

“What morning ?” 

“Whan ye was sittin’ at the fut o’ the 
bored craig.” 

“ Bored craig ! What’s that ?” 

“The rock wi’ a hole throu’ ’t. Ye 


ken the rock weel eneuch, my leddy. 
Ye was sittin’ at the fut o’ ’t, readin’ yer 
buik, as white’s gien ye had been made 
o’ snaw. It cam to me that the rock 
was the sepulchre, the hole the open 
door o’ ’t, an’ yersel’ ane o’ the angels 
that had fauldit his wings an’ was wait- 
in’ for somebody to tell the guid news 
till, that He was up an’ awa’.” 

“And what do I look like to-day?” 
she asked. 

“ Ow ! the day, ye luik like some cratur 
o’ the storm ; or the storm itsel’ takin’ a 
leevin’ shape, an’ the bonniest it could ; 
or maybe, like Ahriel, gaein’ afore the 
win’, wi’ the blast in ’s feathers, rufflin’ 
them a’ gaits at ance.” 

• “Who’s Ahriel ?” 

“ Ow, the fleein’ cratur’ i’ The Tempest ! 
But in your bonny southern speech, I 
daur say ye wad ca’ him — or her, I dinna 
ken whilk the cratur was — ye wad ca’ ’t 
Ay riel ?” 

“ I don’t know anything about him or 
her or it,” said Lady Florimel. 

“Ye’ll hae a’ aboot him up i’ the lib- 
brary there, though,” said Malcolm. 
“ The Tempest's the only ane o’ Shak- 
spere’s plays ’at I hae read, but it’s a 
gran’ ane, as Maister Graham has em- 
pooered me to see.” 

“Oh, dear !” exclaimed Florimel, “I’ve 
lost my book !” 

“I’ll gang back an’ luik for ’t, this 
meenute, my leddy,” said Malcolm. “ I 
ken ilka fit o’ the road we’ve come, an’ 
it’s no possible but I fa’ in wi’ ’t. — Ye’ll 
sune be hame noo, an’ it’ll hardly be on 
again afore ye win in,” he added, look- 
ing up at the clouds. 

“ But how am I to get it ? I want it 
very much.” 

“I’ll jist fess ’t up to the Hoose, an’ 
say ’at I fan’ ’t whaur I will fin’ ’t. But 
I wiss ye wad len’ me yer pocket-nepkin 
to row ’t in, for I’m feared for blaudin’ 
’t afore I get it back to ye.” 

Florimel gave him her handkerchief, 
and Malcolm took his leave, saying — 

“ I’ll be up i’ the coorse o’ a half hoor 
at the farthest.” 

The humble devotion and absolute 
service of the youth, resembling that of 
a noble dog, however unlikely to move 


MALCOLM. 


65 


admiration in Lady Florimel’s heart, 
could not fail to give her a quiet and 
welcome pleasure. He was an inferior 
who could be depended upon, and his 
worship was acceptable. Not a fear of 
his attentions becoming troublesome ever 
crossed her mind. The wider and more 
impassable the distinctions of rank, the 
more possible they make it for artificial 
minds to enter into simply human rela- 
tions ; the easier for the oneness of the 
race to assert itself in the offering and 
acceptance of a devoted service. There 
is more of the genuine human in the re- 
lationship between some men and their 
servants, than between those men and 
their own sons. 

With eyes intent, and keen as those 
of a gazehound, Malcolm retraced every 
step, up to the grated door. But no 
volume was to be seen. Turning from 
the door of the tunnel, for which he had 
no Sesatne, he climbed to the foot of the 
wall that crossed it above, and with a 
bound, a clutch at the top, a pull and a 
scramble, was in the high road in a mo- 
ment. From the road to the links was 
an easy drop, where, starting from the 
grated door, he retraced their path from 
the dune. Lady Florimel had dropped 
the book when she rose, and Malcolm 
found it lying on the sand, little the 
worse. He wrapped it in its owner’s 
handkerchief, and set out for the gate at 
the mouth of the river. 

5 


As he came up to it, the keeper, an 
ill-conditioned, snarling fellow, who, in 
the phrase of the Seaton-folk, “ rade on 
the riggin [ridge] o’ ’s authority,” rushed 
out of the lodge, and just as Malcolm 
was entering, shoved the gate in his 
face. 

‘‘Ye comena in wi’oot the leave o’ 
me,” he cried with a vengeful expres- 
sion. 

‘‘What’s that for ?” said Malcolm, who 
had already interposed his great boot, 
so that the spring-bolt could not reach 
its catch. 

‘‘ There s’ nae Ian’ - loupin’ rascals 
come in here,” said Bykes, setting his 
shoulder to the gate. 

That instant he went staggering back 
to the wall of the lodge, with the gate 
after him. 

‘‘Stick to the wa’ there,” said Malcolm, 
as he strode in. 

The keeper pursued him with frantic 
abuse, but he never turned his head. 
Arrived at the House, he committed the 
volume to the cook, with a brief account 
of where he had picked it up, begging 
her to inquire whether it belonged to 
the House. The cook sent a maid with 
it to Lady Florimel, and Malcolm waited 
until she returned — with thanks and a 
half crown. He took the money, and 
returned by the upper gate through the 
town. 



zv. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE ACCUSATION. 

T he next morning, soon after their 
early breakfast, the gatekeeper 
stood in the door of Duncan MacPhail’s 
cottage with a verbal summons for Mal- 
colm to appear before his lordship. 

“An’ I’m no to lowse sicht o’ ye till ye 
hae put in yer appearance,’’ he added ; 
“sae gien ye dinna come peaceable, I 
maun gar ye.’’ 

“Whaur’s yer warrant.^’’ asked Mal- 
colm coolly. 

“Ye wad hae the impidence to de- 
man’ my warrant, ye young sorner?’’ 
cried Bykes indignantly. “Come yer 
wa’s, my man, or I s’ gar ye smairt 
for ’t.’’ 

“ Haud a quaiet sough, an’ gang hame 
for yer warrant,’’ said Malcolm. “It’s 
lying there, doobtless, or ye wadna hae 
daured to shaw yer face on sic an eeran’.’’ 

Duncan, who was dozing in his chair, 
awoke at the sound of high words. His 
jealous affection perceived at once that 
Malcolm was being insulted. He sprang 
to his feet, stepped swiftly to the wall, 
caught down his broadsword, and rush- 
ed to the door, making the huge weapon 
quiver and whir about his head as if it 
had been a slip of tin-plate. 

“Where is ta rascal?’’ he shouted. 
“ She’ll cut him town ! Show her ta low- 
lan’ thief! She’ll cut him town ! Who’ll 
pe insulting her Malcolm ?’’ 

But Bykes, at first sight of the weapon, 
had vanished in dismay. 

“ Hoot toot, daddy !’’ said Malcolm, 
taking him by the arm; “there’s nae- 
body here. The puir cratur couldna 
bide the sough o’ the claymore. He 
fled like the autumn wind over the stub- 
ble. There’s Ossian for ’t.’’ 

“Ta Lord pe praised !’’ cried Duncan. 
“ She’ll pe confounded her foes. But what 
would ta rascal pe wanting, my son ?’’ 
Leading him back to his chair, Mal- 
66 


colm told him as much as he knew of 
the matter. 

“Ton’t you co for no warrant,’’ said 
Duncan. “ If my lort marquis will pe 
seating for you as one chentleman sends 
for another, then you co.’’ 

Within an hour Bykes reappeared, 
accompanied by one of the gamekeepers 
— an Englishman. The moment he 
heard the door open, Duncan caught 
again at his broadsword. 

“We want you, my young man,’’ said 
the gamekeeper, standing on the thresh- 
old, with Bykes peeping over his shoul- 
der, in an attitude indicating one foot 
already lifted to run. 

“What for ?’’ 

“ That’s as may appear.’’ 

“Whaur’s yer warrant ?’’ 

“ There.’’ 

“Lay ’t doon o’ the table, an’ gang 
back to the door, till I get a sklent at 
it,’’ said Malcolm. “Ye’re an honest 
man, Wull, but I wadna lippen a snuff- 
mull ’at had mair nor ae pinch intill ’t 
wi’ yon cooard cratur ahin’ ye.’’ 

He was afraid of the possible conse- 
quences of his grandfather’s indignation. 

The gamekeeper did at once as he 
was requested, evidently both amused 
with the bearing of the two men and ad- 
miring it. Having glanced at the paper, 
Malcolm put it in his pocket, and whis- 
pering a word to his grandfather, walked 
away with his captors. 

As they went to the House, Bykes 
was full of threats, of which he sought 
to enhance the awfulness by the indef- 
initeness; but Will told Malcolm as 
much as he knew of the matter — name- ’ 
ly, that the head -gamekeeper, having 
lost some dozen of his sitting pheasants, 
had enjoined a strict watch ; and that 
Bykes, having caught sight of Malcolm 
in the very act of getting over the wall, 
had gone and given information against 
him. 


MALCOLM. 


No one about the premises except 
Bykes would have been capable of har- 
boring suspicion of Malcolm ; and the 
head-gamekeeper had not the slightest ; 
but, knowing that his lordship found 
little enough to amuse him, and antici- 
pating some laughter from the confront- 
ing of two such opposite characters, he 
had gone to the marquis with Bykes’s 
report; and this was the result. His 
lordship was not a magistrate, and the 
so-called warrant was merely a some- 
what sternly-worded expression of his 
desire that Malcolm should appear and 
answer to the charge. 

The accused was led into a vaulted 
chamber opening from the hall — a gen- 
uine portion, to judge from its deep low- 
arched recesses, the emergence of trun- 
cated portions of two or three groins, 
and the thickness of its walls, of the old 
monastery. Close by the door ascended 
a right-angled modern staircase. 

Lord Lossie entered, and took his seat 
in a great chair in one of the recesses. 

“So, you young jackanapes!” he said, 
half angry and half amused, “you de- 
cline to come, when I send for you, with- 
out a magistrate’s warrant, forsooth ! It 
looks bad to begin with, I must say I” 

“Yer lordship wad never hae had me 
come at sic a summons as that cankert 
ted [toad) Johnny Bykes broucht me. 
Gien ye had but hard him ! He spak as 
gien he had been sent to fess me to yer 
lordship by the scruff o’ the neck, an’ I 
didna believe yer lordship wad do sic a 
thing. Ony gait, I wasna gauin’ to stan’ 
that. Ye wad hae thocht him a cornel at 
the sma’est, an’ me a wheen heerin’-guts. 
But it wad hae garred ye lauch, my lord, 
to see hoo the body ran whan my blin’ 
gran’father — he canna bide onybody in- 
terferin’ wi’ me — made at him wi’ his 
braidswoord !” 

“Ye leein’ rascal !” cried Bykes ; “ — i7te 
feared at sic an auld spidder, ’at has- 
na breath eneuch to fill the bag o’ ’s 
pipes I” 

“Caw canny, Johnny Bykes. Gien ye 
say an ill word o’ my gran’father, I s’ 
gie your neck a thraw — an’ that the 
meenute we’re oot o’ ’s lordship’s pres- 
ence.” 


67 

“ Threits 1 my lord,” said the gate- 
keeper, appealing. 

“And well merited,” returned his lord- 
ship. — “Well, then,” he went on, again 
addressing Malcolm, “ what have you to 
say for yourself in regard to stealing my 
brood-pheasants ?” 

“Maister MacPherson,” said Malcolm, 
with an inclination of his head toward 
the gamekeeper, “ micht ha’ fun’ a fitter 
neuk to fling that dirt intill. ’Deed, my 
lord, it’s sae ridic’lous, it hardly angers 
me. A man ’at can hae a’ the fish i’ 
the haill ocean for the takin’ o’ them, 
to be sic a sneck-drawin’ contemptible 
vratch as tak yer lordship’s bonny hen- 
craturs frae their chuckies — no to men- 
tion the sin o’ ’t 1 — it’s past an honest 
man’s denyin’, my lord. .An’ Maister 
MacPherson kens better, for luik at him 
lauchin’ in ’s ain sleeve.” 

“Well, we’ve no proof of it,” said the 
marquis ; “ but what do you say to the 
charge of trespass ?’ 

“The policies hae aye been open to 
honest fowk, my lord.” 

“Then where was the necessity for 
getting in over the wall ?” 

“ I beg yer pardon, my lord : ye hae 
nae proof agen me o’ that aither.” 

“ Daur ye tell me," cried Bykes, re- 
covering himself, “ ’at I didna see ye wi’ 
my ain twa een, loup the dyke aneth 
the temple — ay, an’ something flutterin’ 
unco like bird-wings i’ yer han’ ?” 

“ Oot or in, Johnny Bykes ?” 

“ Ow I oot.” 

“ I did loup the dyke, my lord, but it 
was oot, no hi" 

“How did you get in then?” asked the 
marquis. 

“ I gat in, my lord — ” began Malcolm, 
and ceased. 

“ How did you get in ?” repeated the 
marquis. 

“Ow! there’s mony w’ys o’ winnin’ in, 
my lord. The last time I cam in but 
ane, it was ’maist ower the carcass o’ 
Johnny there, wha wad fain hae hauden 
me oot, only he hadna my blin’ daddy 
ahint him to ile ’s jints.” 

“An’ dinna ye ca’ that brakin’ in?” 
said Bykes. 

“Na; there was naething to brak, ’cep 


68 


MALCOLM. 


it had been your banes, Johnny ; an’ that 
wad hae been a peety — they’re sae guid 
for rinnin’ wi’.” 

“You had no right to enter against the 
will of my gatekeeper,’’ said his lord- 
ship. “What is a gatekeeper for ?’’ 

“I had a richt, my lord, sae lang ’s I 
was upo’ my leddy’s business.’’ 

“And what was my lady’s business, 
pray?’’ questioned the marquis. 

“ I faun’ a buik upo’ the links, my lord, 
which was like to be hers, wi’ the twa 
beasts ’at stans at yer lordship’s door in- 
side the brod [board) o’ ’t. An’ sae it 
turned oot to be whan I took it up to the 
Hoose. There’s the half-croon she gae 
me.’’ 

Little did Malcolm think where the 
daintiest of pearly ears were listening, 
and the brightest of blue eyes looking 
down, half in merriment, a quarter in 
anxiety, and the remaining quarter in 
interest ! On a landing half way up the 
stair, stood Lady Florimel, peeping over 
the balusters, afraid to fix her eyes upon 
him lest she should make him look up. 

“Yes, yes, I dare say !’’ acquiesced the 
marquis; “but,’’ he persisted, “what I 
want to know is, how you got in that 
time. You seem to have some reluctance 
to answer the question.’’ 

“Weel, I hev, my lord.’’ 

“Then I must insist on your doing 
so.’’ 

“Weel, I jist winna, my lord. It was 
a’ straucht foret an’ fair; an’ gien yer 
lordship war i’ my place, ye wadna say 
mair yersel’.’’ 

“ He’s been after one of the girls about 
the place,’’ whispered the marquis to the 
gamekeeper. 

“Speir at him, my lord, gien ’t please 
yer lordship, what it was he hed in ’s 
han’ whan he lap the park-wa’,’’ said 
Bykes. 

“ Gien ’t be a’ ane till ’s lordship,’’ said 
Malcolm, without looking at Bykes, “it 
wad be better no to speir, for it gangs 
sair agen me to refeese him.’’ 

“ I should like to know,’’ said the mar- 
quis. 

“Ye maun trust me, my lord, that I 
was efter no ill. I gie ye my word for 
that, my lord.’’ 


“But how am I to know what your 
word is worth ?’’ returned Lord Lossie, 
well pleased with the dignity of the 
youth’s behavior. 

“To ken what a body’s word ’s worth 
ye maun trust him first, my lord. It’s 
no muckle trust I want o’ ye : it comes 
but to this — that I hae rizzons, guid to 
me, an’ no ill to you gien ye kent them, 
for not answerin’ yer lordship’s questons. 
I’m no denyin’ a word ’at Johnny Bykes 
says. I never hard the Cratur ca’d a 
leear. He’s but a cantankerous argle- 
barglous body — no fit to be a gatekeep- 
er, ’cep' it was up upo’ the Binn-side, 
whaur ’maist naebody gangs oot or in. 
He wad maybe be safter-hertit till a fel- 
low-cratur syne.’’ 

“Would you have him let in all the 
tramps in the country ?’’ said the mar- 
quis. 

“ De’il ane o’ them, my lord ; but I 
wad hae him no trouble the likes o’ me 
’at fesses the fish to yer lordship’s brak- 
wast : sic ’s no like to be efter mischeef.’’ 

“There is some glimmer of sense in 
what you say,’’ returned his lordship. 
“ But you know it won’t do to let any- 
body that pleases get over the park-walls. 
Why didn’t you go out at the gate ?’’ 

“ The burn was atween me an’ hit, an’ 
it’s a lang road roon’.’’ 

“Well, I must lay some penalty upon 
you, to deter others,’’ said the marquis. 

“ Verra v/eel, my lord. Sae lang ’s it’s 
fair, I s’ bide it ohn grutten [without 
weeping)." 

“It sha’n’t be too hard. It’s just this 
— to give John Bykes the thrashing he 
deserves, as soon as you’re out of sight 
of the House.’’ 

“Na, na, my lord; I canna do that,’’ 
said Malcolm. 

“ So you’re afraid of him, after all !’’ 

“Feared at Johnnie Bykes, my lord! 
Ha! ha!’’ 

“You threatened him a minute ago, 
and now, when I give you leave to thrash 
him, you decline the honor !’’ 

“The disgrace, my lord. He’s an 
aulder man, an’ no abune half the size. 
But fegs ! gien he says anither word agen 
my gran’father, I will gie ’s neck a bit 
thraw.’’ 


MALCOLM. 


69 


"Well, well, be ofif with you both," 
said the marquis, rising. 

No one heard the rustle of Lady Flo- 
rimel’s dress as she sped up the stair, 
thinking within herself how very odd it 
was to have a secret with a fisherman ; 
for a secret it was, seeing the reticence 
of Malcolm had been a relief to her, 
when she shrunk from what seemed the 
imminent mention of her name in the 
affair before the servants. She had even 
jelt a touch of mingled admiration and 
gratitude when she found what a faithful 
squire he was — capable of an absolute 
obstinacy indeed, where she was con- 
cerned. For her own sake as well as 
his she was glad that he had got off so 
well, for otherwise she would have felt 
bound to tell her father the whole story, 
and she was not at all so sure as Mal- 
colm that he would have been satisfied 
with his reasons, and would not have 
been indignant with the fellow for pre- 
suming even to be silent concerning his 
daughter. Indeed, Lady Florimel her- 
self felt somewhat irritated with him, as 
having brought her into the awkward 
situation of sharing a secret with a youth 
of his position. 


CHAPTER XVITI. 

THE QUARREL. 

For a few days the weather was dull 
and unsettled, with cold flaws and an 
occasional sprinkle of rain. But after 
came a still gray morning, warm and 
hopeful, and ere noon the sun broke out, 
the nrists vanished, and the day was 
glorious in blue and gold. Malcolm had 
been to Scaurnose, to see his friend 
Joseph Mair, and was descending the 
steep path down the side of the prom- 
ontory, on his way home, when his keen 
eye caught sight of a form on the slope 
of the dune which could hardly be other 
than that of Lady Florimel. She did 
not lift her eyes until he came quite near, 
and then only to drop them again with 
no more recognition than if he had been 
any other of the fishermen. Already 
more than half inclined to pick a quarrel 
with him, she fancied that, presuming 


upon their very commonplace adventure 
and its resulting secret, he aproached her 
with an assurance he had never mani- 
fested before, and her head was bent 
motionless over her book when he stood 
and addressed her. 

"My leddy," he began, with his bon- 
net by his knee. 

"Well?" she returned, without even 
lifting her eyes, for, with the inherited 
privilege of her rank, she could be inso- 
lent with coolness, and call it to mind 
without remorse. 

" I houp the bit buikie wasna muckle 
the waur, my leddy," he said. 

"’Tis of no consequence," she re- 
plied. 

"Gien it war mine, I wadna think 
sae," he returned, eyeing her anxiously. 
" — Here’s yer leddyship’s pocket-nep- 
kin,” he went on. " I hae keepit it ready 
rowed up, ever sin’ my daddy washed it 
oot. It’s no ill dune for a blin’ man, as 
ye’ll see, an’ I ironed it mysel’ as weel ’s 
I cud." 

As he spoke he unfolded a piece of 
brown paper, disclosing a little parcel in 
a cover of immaculate post, which he 
humbly offered her. 

Taking it slowly from his hand, she 
laid it on the ground beside her with a 
stiff " Thank you," and a second drop- 
ping of her eyes that seemed meant to 
close the interview. 

" I doobt my company ’s no welcome 
the day, my leddy," said Malcolm with 
trembling voice ; "but there’s ae thing I 
maun refar till. Whan I took hame yer 
leddyship’s buik the ither day, ye sent me 
a half a croon by the han’ o’ yer servan’ 
lass. Afore her I wasna gaein’ to disal- 
loo onythmg ye pleased wi’ regaird to 
me ; an’ I thocht wi’ mysel’ it was may- 
be necessar’ for yer leddyship’s dignity 
an’ the luik o’ things — ’’ 

" How dare you hint at any under- 
standing between you and me ?" exclaim- 
ed the girl in cold anger. 

" Lord, mem ! what hev I said to fess 
sic a fire-flaucht oot o’ yer bonny een ? 
I thocht ye only did it ’cause ye wad na 
like to luik shabby afore the lass — no 
giein’ onything to the lad ’at brocht ye 
yer ain — an’ lippened to me to unnerstan’ 


^ MALCOLM. 


70 

t 

’at ye did it but for the luik o’ the thing, 
as I say.” 

He had taken the coin from his pocket, 
and had been busy while he spoke rub- 
bing it in a handful of sand, so that it 
was bright as new when he now offered 
it. 

‘‘You are quite mistaken,” she rejoin- 
i^d, ungraciously. ‘‘You insult me by 
supposing I meant you to return it.” 

‘‘ Div ye think I cud bide to be paid 
for a turn till a neebor, lat alane the lift- 
in’ o’ a buik till a leddy ?” said Malcolm 
with keen mortification. ‘‘ That wad be 
to despise mysel’ frae keel to truck. I 
like to be paid for my wark, an’ I like to 
be paid well ; but no a plack by sic-like 
{beyond suc/i) sail stick to my loof {palm). 
It can be no offence to gie ye back yer 
half-croon, my leddy.” 

And again he offered the coin. 

‘‘I don’t in the least see why, on your 
own principles, you shouldn’t take the 
money,” said the girl, with more than 
the coldness of an uninterested umpire. 
‘‘You worked for it. I’m sure — first ac- 
companying me home in such a storm, 
and then finding the book and bringing 
it back all the way to the house !” 

‘‘’Deed, my leddy, sic a doctrine wad 
tak a’ grace oot o’ the earth ! What wad 
this life be worth gien a’ was to be peyed 
for ? I wad cut my throat afore I wad 
bide in sic a warl’. — Tak yer half-croon, 
my leddy,” he concluded, in a tone of 
entreaty. 

But the energetic outburst was suf- 
ficing, in such her mood, only to the dis- 
gust of Lady Florimel. 

‘‘Do anything with the money you 
please ; only go away, and don’t plague 
me about it,” she said freezingly. 

‘‘What can I du wi’ what I wadna pass 
throu’ my fingers?” said Malcolm with 
the patience of deep disappointment. 

‘‘Give it to some poor creature: you 
know some one who would be glad of it, 

I dare say.” 

‘‘ I ken mony ane, my leddy, wham it 
wad weel become yer ain bonny han’ to 
gie ’t till; but I’m no gaein’ to tak’ 
credit fer a leeberality that wad ill be- 
come me.” 

‘‘You can tell how you earned it.” 


I ‘‘And profess mysel’ disgraced by 
takin’ a reward frae a born leddy for 
what I wad hae dune for ony beggar 
wife i’ the Ian’ ! Na, na, my leddy.” 

‘‘Your services are certainly flattering, 
when you put me on a level with any 
beggar in the country !” 

‘‘In regaird o’ sic service, my leddy : ye 
ken weel eneuch what I mean. Obleege 
me by takin’ back yer siller.” 

‘‘ How dare you ask me to take back 
what I once gave ?” 

‘‘Ye cudna hae kent what ye was doin’ 
whan ye gae ’t, my leddy. Tak it back, 
an tak a hunnerweicht afif o’ my hert.” 

He actually mentioned his heart ! — was 
it to be borne by a girl in Lady Florimel’s 
mood ? 

‘‘ I beg you will not annoy me,” she 
said, muffling her anger in folds of dis- 
tance, and again sought her book. 

Malcolm looked at her for a moment, 
then turned his face toward the sea, and 
for another moment stood silent. Lady 
Florimel glanced up, but Malcolm was 
unaware of her movement. He lifted 
his hand, and looked at the half-crown 
gleaming on his palm; then, with a 
sudden poise of his body, and a sudden 
fierce action of his arm, he sent the coin, 
swift with his heart’s repudiation, across 
the sands into the tide. Ere it struck 
the water, he had turned, and, with long 
stride but low-bent head, walked away. 
A pang shot to Lady Florimel’s heart. 

‘‘Malcolm !” she cried. 

He turned instantly, came slowly back, 
and stood erect and silent before her. 

She must say something. Her eye fell 
on the little parcel beside her, and she 
spoke the first thought that came. 

‘‘Will you take this?” she said, and 
offered him the handkerchief. 

In a dazed way he put out his hand 
and took it, staring at it as if he did not 
know what it was. 

‘‘It’s some sair!” he said at length, 
with a motion of his hands as if to grasp 
his head between them. ‘‘Ye winna tak 
even the washin’ o’ a pocket-nepkin frae 
me, an* ye wad gar me tak a haill half- 
croon frae yersel’ ! Mem, ye’re a gran’ 
leddy an’ a bonny; an ye hae turns 
1 aboot ye, gien ’twar but the set o’ yer 


MALCOLM. 


71 


heid, ’at micht gar an angel lat fa’ what 
he was carryin’, but afore I wad affront 
ane that wantit naething o’ me but gude 
will, I wad — I wad — raither be the fisher- 
lad that I am.” 

A weak-kneed peroration, truly; but 
Malcom w^as overburdened at last. He 
laid the little parcel on the sand at 
her feet, almost reverentially, and again 
turned. But Lady Florimel spoke again. 

‘‘It is you who are affronting me now,” 
she said gently. ‘‘When a lady gives her 
handkerchief to a gentleman, it is com- 
monly received as a very great favor in- 
deed.” 

‘‘Gien I hae made a mistak, my leddy, 
I micht weel mak it, no bein’ a gentle- 
man, and no bein’ used to the traitment 
o’ ane. But I doobt gien a gentleman 
wad ha’ surmised what ye was efter wi’ 
yer neepkin, gien ye had offert him half 
a croon first.” 

‘‘Oh yes, he would — perfectly!” said 
Florimel with an air of offence. 

‘‘Then, my leddy, for the first time i’ 
my life, I wish I had been born a gen- 
tleman.” 

“Then I certainly wouldn’t have given 
it you,” said Florimel with perversity. 

“What for no, my leddy? I dinna 
unnerstan’ ye again. There maun be an 
unco differ atween ’s !” 

“ Because a gentleman would have 
presumed on such a favor.” 

“I’m glaidder nor ever ’at I wasna 
born ane,” said Malcolm, and, slowly 
stooping, he lifted the handkerchief ; 
“an’ I was aye glaid o’ that, my leddy, 
’cause gien I had been, I wad hae been 
luikin’ doon upo’ workin’ men like my- 
sel’ as gien they warna freely o’ the same 
flesh an’ blude. But I beg yer leddy- 
ship’s pardon for takin’ ye up amiss. 
An’ sae lang’s I live. I’ll regaird this as 
ane o’ her fedders ’at the angel moutit 
as she sat by the bored craig. An’ whan 
I’m deid, I’ll hae ’t laid upo’ my face, 
an’ syne, maybe, I may get a sicht o’ ye 
as I pass. Guid-day, my leddy.” 

“Good-day,” she returned kindly. “I 
wish my father would let me have a row 
in your boat.” 

“ It’s at yer service whan ye please, my 
leddy,” said Malcolm. 


One who had caught a glimpse of the 
shining yet solemn eyes of the youth, as 
he walked home, would wonder no long- 
er that he should talk as he did — so se- 
dately, yet so poetically — so long-wind- 
edly, if you like, yet so sensibly — even 
wisely. 

Lady Florimel lay on the sand, and 
sought again to read the Faerie Queene. 
But for the last day or two she had been 
getting tired of it, and now the forms 
that entered by her eyes dropped half 
their substance and all their sense in the 
porch, and thronged her brain with the 
mere phantoms of things, with words 
that came and went and were nothing. 
Abandoning the harvest of chaff, her 
eyes rose and looked out upon the sea. 
Never, even from tropical shore, was 
richer-hued ocean beheld. Gorgeous in 
purple and green, in shadowy blue and 
flashing gold, it seemed to Malcolm, as 
if at any moment the ever new-born An- 
adyomene might lift her shining head 
from the wandering floor, and float away 
in her pearly lustre to gladden the regions 
where the glaciers glide seaward in irre- 
sistible silence, there to give birth to the 
icebergs in tumult and thunderous up- 
roar. But Lady Florimel felt merely the 
loneliness. One deserted boat lay on 
the long sand, like the bereft and useless 
half of a double shell. Without show 
of life the moveless cliffs lengthened far 
into a sea where neither white sail deep- 
ened the purple and gold, nor red one 
enriched it with a color it could not itself 
produce. Neither hope nor aspiration 
awoke in her heart at the sight. Was 
she beginning to be tired of her com- 
panionless liberty ? Had the long stan- 
zas, bound by so many interwoven links 
of rhyme, ending in long Alexandrines, 
the long cantos, the lingering sweetness 
long drawn out through so many unend- 
ed books, begun to weary her at last? 
Had even a quarrel with a fisher-lad 
been a little pastime to her ? and did she 
now wish she had detained him a little 
longer ? Could she take any interest in 
him beyond such as she took in Demon, 
her father’s dog, or Brazen ose, his favor- 
ite horse ? 

Whatever might be her thoughts or 


72 


MALCOLM. 


feelings at this moment, it remained a 
fact, that Florimel Colonsay, the daugh- 
ter of a marquis, and Malcolm, the 
grandson of a blind piper, were woman 
and man — and the man the finer of the 
two this time. 

As Malcolm passed on his way one of 
the three or four solitary rocks which 
rose from the sand, the skeleton rem- 
nants of large masses worn down by 
wind, wave and weather, he heard his 
own name uttered by an unpleasant 
voice, and followed by a more unpleas- 
ant laugh. 

He knew both the voice and the laugh, 
and, turning, saw Mrs. Catanach, seated, 
apparently busy with her knitting, in the 
shade of the rock. 

"Weel?” he said curtly. 

“ Weel! — Set ye up! — Wha’s yon ye 
was play-actin’ wi’ oot yonner?.” 

“Wha telled ye to speir. Mistress Cat- 
anach ?” 

“ Ay, ay, laad ! Ye’ll be abune speyk- 
in’ till an auld wife efter colloguin’ wi’ a 
yoong ane, an’ sic a ane 1 Isna she 
bonny, Malkie? Isna hers a winsome 
shape an’ a lauchin’ ee ? Didna she 
draw ye on, an’ luik i’ the hawk’s-een o’ 
ye, an’ lay herself oot afore ye, an’ — ?” 

“ She did naething o’ the sort, ye ill- 
tongued wuman !” said Malcolm in anger. 

“ Ho 1 ho 1” trumpeted Mrs. Catanach. 
“ Ill-tongued, am I ? An’ what neist ?” 

“ 111 - deedit,” returned Malcolm — 
“whan ye flang my bonny salmon-troot 
till yer oogly deevil o’ a dog.” 

“ Ho ! ho I ho ! Ill-deedit, am I ? I 
s’ no forget thae bonny names ! Maybe 
yer lordship wad alloo me the leeberty 
o’ speirin’ anither question at ye, Ma’- 
colm MacPhail ?” 

“Ye may speir ’at ye like, sae lang ’s 
ye canna gar me stan’ to hearken; Guid- 
day to ye. Mistress Catanach. Yer com- 
pany was nane o’ my seekin’ : I may 
lea’ ’t whan I like.” 

“ Uinna ye be ower sure o’ that,” she 
called after him venomously. 

But Malcolm turned his head no more. 

As soon as he was out of sight, Mrs. 
Catanach rose, ascended the dune, and 
propelled her rotundity along the yield- 
ing top of it. When she arrived within 


speaking distance of Lady Florimel, who 
lay lost in her dreary regard of sand and 
sea, she paused for a moment, as if con- 
templating her. 

Suddenly, almost by Lady Florimel’s 
side, as if he had risen from the sand, 
stood the form of the mad laird. 

“ I dinna ken whaur I come frae,” he 
said. 

Lady Florimel started, half rose, and 
seeing the dwarf so near, and on the 
other side of her a repulsive-looking wo- 
man staring at her, sprung to her feet 
and fled. The same instant the mad 
laird, catching sight of Mrs. Catanach, 
gave a cry of misery, thrust his fingers 
in his ears, darted down the other side 
of the dune, and sped along the shore. 
Mrs. Catanach shook with laughter. “ I 
hae skailled [dispersed] the bonny doos !” 
she said. Then she called aloud after 
the flying girl, — 

“ My leddy I My bonny leddy I” 

Florimel paid no heed, but ran straight 
for the door of the tunnel, and vanished. 
Thence leisurely climbing to the temple 
of the winds, she looked down from a 
height of safety upon the shore and the 
retreating figure of Mrs. Catanach. Seat- 
ing herself by the pedestal of the trump- 
et-blowing Wind, she assayed her read- 
ing again, but was again startled — this 
time by a rough salute from Demon. 
Presently her father appeared, and Lady 
Florimel felt something like a pang of 
relief at being found there, and not on 
the farther side of the dune making it 
up with Malcolm. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

DUNCAN’S PIPES. 

A FEW days after the events last nar- 
rated, a footman in the marquis’s livery 
entered the Seaton, snuffing with em- 
phasized discomposure the air of the vil- 
lage, all-ignorant of the risk he ran in 
thus openly manifesting his feelings for 
the women at least were good enough 
citizens to resent any indignity offered 
their town. As vengeance would have 
it, Meg Partan was the first of whom, 
with supercilious airs and “clippit” 


MALCOLM. 


tongue, he requested to know where a 
certain blind man, who played on an in- 
strument called the bagpipes, lived. 

‘‘Spit i’ yer loof an’ caw [search] for 
him,” she answered — a reply of which 
he understood the tone and one disagree- 
able word. 

With reddening cheek he informed her 
that he came on his lord’s business. 

‘‘I dinna doobt it,” she retorted; ‘‘ye 
luik sic-like as rins ither fowk’s eeran’s.” 

‘‘ I should be obliged if you would in- 
form me where the man lives,” returned 
the lackey — with polite words in super- 
cilious tones. 

‘‘What d’ ye want wi’ him, honest 
man ?” grimly questioned the Partaness, 
the epithet referring to Duncan, and not 
the questioner. 

‘‘That I shall have the honor of in- 
forming himself,” he replied. 

‘‘Weel, ye can hae the honor o’ in- 
formin’ yersel’ whaur he bides,” she re- 
joined, and turned away from her open 
door. 

All were not so rude as she, however, 
for he found at length a little girl willing 
to show him the way. 

The style in which his message was 
delivered was probably modified by the 
fact that he found Malcolm seated with 
his grandfather at their evening meal of 
water-brose and butter ; for he had been 
present when Malcolm was brought be- 
fore the marquis by Bykes, and had in 
some measure compi^hended the nature 
of the youth : it was in politest phrase, 
and therefore entirely to Duncan’s satis- 
faction in regard to the manner as well 
as matter of the message, that he re- 
quested Mr. Duncan MacPhail’s attend- 
ance on the marquis the following even- 
ing at six o’clock, to give his lordship 
and some distinguished visitors the pleas- 
ure of hearing him play on the bagpipes 
during dessert. To this summons the 
old man returned stately and courteous 
reply, couched in the best English, he 
could command, which, although con- 
siderably distorted by Gaelic pronuncia- 
tion and idioms, was yet sufficiently in- 
telligible to the messenger, who carried 
home the substance for the satisfaction 
of his master, and what he could of the 


73 

form for the amusement of his fellow- 
servants. 

Duncan, although he received it with 
perfect calmness, was yet overjoyed at 
the invitation. He had performed once 
or twice before the late marquis, and 
having ever since assumed the style of 
Piper to the Marquis of Lossie, now re- 
garded the summons as confirmation in 
the office. The moment the sound of 
the messenger’s departing footsteps died 
away, he caught up his pipes from the 
corner, where, like a pet cat, they lay on 
a bit of carpet, the only piece in the cot- 
tage, spread for them between his chair 
and the wall, and, though cautiously 
mindful of its age and proved infirmity, 
filled the bag full, and burst into such a 
triumphant onset of battle that all the 
children of the Seaton were in a few 
minutes crowded about the door. He 
had not played above five minutes, how- 
ever, when the love of finery natural to 
the Gael, the Gaul and the Galatian tri- 
umphed over his love of music, and he 
stopped with an abrupt groan of the in- 
strument to request Malcolm to get him 
new streamers. Whatever his notions 
of its nature might be, he could not come 
of the Celtic race without having in him 
somewhere a strong faculty for color, 
and no doubt his fancy regarding it was 
of something as glorious as his know- 
ledge of it must have been vague. At 
all events, he not only knew the names 
of the colors in ordinary use, but could 
describe many of the clan tartans with 
perfect accuracy; and he now gave Mal- 
colm complete instructions as to the hues 
of the ribbon he was to purchase. As 
soon as he had started on the important 
mission, the old man laid aside his in- 
strument, and taking his broadsword 
from the wall, proceeded with the aid of 
brick-dust and lamp-oil, to furbish hilt 
and blade with the utmost care, search- 
ing out spot after spot of rust, to the 
smallest, with the delicate points of his 
great bony fingers. Satisfied at length 
of its brightness, he requested Malcolm, 
who had returned long before the opera- 
tion was over, to bring him the sheath, 
which, for fear of its coming to pieces, 
so old and crumbling was the leather, he 


74 


MALCOLM. 


kept laid up in the drawer with his spor- 
ran and his Sunday coat. His next 
business, for he would not commit it to 
Malcolm, was to adorn the pipes with 
the new streamers. Asking the color of 
each, and going by some principle of 
arrangement known only to himself, he 
affixed them, one after the other, as he 
judged right, shaking and drawing out 
each to its full length with as much pride 
as if it had been a tone instead of a rib- 
bon. This done, he resumed his play- 
ing, and continued it, notwithstanding 
the remonstrances of his grandson, until 
bedtime. 

That night he slept but little, and as 
the day went on grew more and more 
excited. Scarcely had he swallowed his 
twelve o’clock dinner of sowens and oat- 
cake, when he wanted to go and dress 
himself for his approaching visit. Mal- 
colm induced him, however, to lie down 
a while and hear him play, and suc- 
ceeded, strange as it may seem w-ith 
such an instrument, in lulling him to 
sleep. But he had not slept more than 
five minutes when he sprang from the 
bed, wide awake, crying, 

“My poy, Malcolm! my son! you haf 
let her sleep in ; and ta creat peoples will 
pe impatient for her music, and cursing 
her in teir hearts!” 

Nothing would quiet him but the im- 
mediate commencement of the process 
of dressing, the result of which was, as 
I have said, even pathetic, from its inter- 
mixture of shabbiness and finery. The 
dangling brass-capped tails of his sporran 
in front, the silver-mounted dirk on one 
side, with its hilt of black oak carved into 
an eagle’s head, and the steel basket of 
his broadsword gleaming at the other ; his 
great shoulder-brooch of rudely chased 
brass ; the pipes with their withered bag 
and gaudy streamers; the faded kilt, 
oiled and soiled; the stockings darned 
in twenty places by the hands of the 
termagant Meg Partan ; the brogues 
patched and patched until it would have 
been hard to tell a spot of the original 
leather; the round blue bonnet grown 
gray with wind and weather; the belts 
that looked like old harness ready to 
yield at a pull ; his skene dhu stick- 


ing out grim and black beside a knee 
like a lean knuckle : — all combined to 
form a picture ludicrous to a vulgar na- 
ture, but gently pitiful to the lover of 
his kind. He looked like a half-mould- 
ered warrior, waked from beneath an 
ancient cairn, to walk about in a world 
other than he took it to* be. Malcolm, 
in his commonplace Sunday suit, served 
as a foil to his picturesque grandfather ; 
to whose oft-reiterated desire that he 
would wear the highland dress, he had 
hitherto returned no other answer than 
a humorous representation of the differ- 
ent remarks with which the neighbors 
would encounter such a solecism. 

The whole Seaton turned out to see 
them start. Men, women and children 
lined the fronts and gables of the houses 
they must pass on their way ; for every- 
body knew where they were going, and 
wished them good luck. As if he had 
been a great bard with a henchman of 
his own, Duncan strode along in front, 
and Malcolm followed, carrying the 
pipes, and regarding his grandfather 
with a mingled pride and compassion 
lovelyto see. But as soon as they were 
beyond the village the old man took the 
young one’s arm, not to guide him, for 
that was needless, but to stay his steps a 
little, for when dressed he would, as I 
have said, carry no staff ; and thus they 
entered the nearest gate leading to the 
grounds. Bykes saw them and scoffed, 
but with discretion, and kept out of their 
way. 

When they 'reached the House, they 
were taken to the servants’ hall, where 
refreshments were offered them. The 
old man ate sparingly, saying he wanted 
all the room for his breath, but swallow- 
ed a glass of whisky with readiness ; for, 
although he never spent a farthing on it, 
he had yet a highlander’s respect for 
whisky, and seldom refused a glass when 
offered him. On this occasion, besides, 
anxious to do himself credit as a piper, 
he was well pleased to add a little fuel 
to the failing fires of old age ; and the 
summons to the dining-room being in 
his view long delayed, he had, before 
they left the hall, taken a second glass. 

They were led along endless passages, 


MALCOLM. 


75 


up a winding stone stair, across a lobby, 
and through room after room. 

“ It will pe some glamour, sure, Mal- 
colm !” said Duncan in a whisper as 
they went. 

Requested at length to seat themselves 
in an ante-room, the air of which was 
filled with the sounds and odors of the 
neighboring feast, they waited again 
through what seemed to the impatient 
Duncan an hour of slow vacuity ; but at 
last they were conducted into the dining- 
room. F'ollowing their guide, Malcolm 
led the old man to the place prepared 
for him at the upper part of the room, 
where the floor was raised a step or two. 

Duncan would, I fancy, even unpro- 
tected by his blindness, have strode un- 
abashed into the very halls of heaven. 
As he entered there was a hush, for his 
poverty-stricken age and dignity told for 
one brief moment; then the buzz and 
laughter recommenced, an occasional 
oath emphasizing itself in the confused 
noise of the talk, the gurgle of wine, the 
ring of glass and the chink of china. 

In Malcolm’s vision, dazzled and be- 
wildered at first, things soon began to 
arrange themselves. The walls of the 
room receded to their proper distance, 
and he saw that they were covered with 
pictures of ladies and gentlemen gor- 
geously attired ; the ceiling rose and set- 
tled into the dim show of a sky, amongst 
the clouds of which the shapes of very 
solid women and children disported 
themselves ; while about the glittering 
table, lighted by silver candelabra with 
many branches, he distinguished the 
gayly - dressed company, round which, 
like huge ill-painted butterflies, the liv- 
eried footmen hovered. His eyes soon 
found the lovely face of Lady Florimel, 
but after the first glance he dared hardly 
look again. Whether its radiance had 
any smallest source in the pleasure of 
appearing like a goddess in the eyes of 
her humble servant, I dare not say, but 
more lucent she could hardly have ap- 
peared had she been the princess in a 
fairy tale, about to marry her much- 
thwarted prince. She wore far too many 
jewels for one so young, for her father 
had given her all that had belonged to 


her mother, as well as some family dia- 
monds, and her .inexperience knew no 
reason why she should not wear them. 
The diamonds flashed and sparkled and 
glowed on a white rather thanTair neck, 
which, being very much tmcollared, daz- 
zled Malcolm far more than the jewels. 
Such a form of enhanced loveliness, re- 
flected for the first time in the pure mir- 
ror of a high-toned manhood, may well 
be to such a youth as that of an angel 
with whom he has henceforth to wrestle 
in deadly agony until the final dawn ; 
for lofty condition and gorgeous circum- 
stance, while combining to raise a wo- 
man to an ideal height, ill suffice to lift 
her beyond love, or shield the lowliest 
man from the arrows of her radiation ; 
they leave her human still. She was 
talking and laughing with a young man 
of weak military aspect, whose eyes 
gazed unshrinking on her beauty. 

The guests were not numerous : a cer-^ 
tain bold-faced countess, the fire in whose 
eyes had begun to tarnish, and the nat- 
ural lines of whose figure were vanishing 
in expansion ; the soldier, her nephew, 
a wasted elegance ; a long, lean man, 
who dawdled with what he ate, and 
drank as if his bones thirsted ; an elder- 
ly, broad, red-faced, bull-necked baron 
of the Hanoverian type ; and two neigh- 
boring lairds and their wives, ordinary, 
and well pleased to be at the marquis’s 
table. 

Although the waiting were as many 
as the waited upon, Malcolm, who was 
keen-eyed and had a passion for service 
— a thing unintelligible to the common 
mind — soon spied an opportunity of 
making himself useful. Seeing one of 
the men, suddenly called away, set down 
a dish of fruit just as the countess was 
expecting it, he jumped up, almost in- 
voluntarily, and handed it to her. Once 
in the current of things, Malcolm would 
not readily make for the shore of inac- 
tivity : he finished the round of the table 
with the dish, while the men looked 
indignant, and the marquis eyed him 
queerly. 

While he was thus engaged, however, 
Duncan, either that his poor stock of 
patience was now utterly exhausted, or 


MALCOLM, 


76 

that he fancied a signal given, com- 
pressed of a sudden his full-blown wait- 
ing bag, and blasted forth such a wild 
howl of a pibroch, that more than one 
of the ladies gave a cry and half started 
from their chairs. The marquis burst 
out laughing, but gave orders to stop 
him — a thing not to be effected in a mo- 
ment, for Duncan was in full tornado, 
with the avenues of hearing, both cor- 
poreal and mental, blocked by his own 
darling utterance. Understanding at 
length, he ceased with the air and al- 
most the carriage of a suddenly checked 
horse, looking half startled, half angry, 
his cheeks puffed, his nostrils expanded, 
his head thrown back, the port-vent still 
in his mouth, the blown bag under his 
arm, and his fingers on the chanter — on 
the fret to dash forward again with re- 
doubled energy. But slowly the strained 
muscles relaxed, he let the tube fall from 
his lips, and the bag descended to his 
lap. “A man forbid,” he heard the la- 
dies rise and leave the room, and not 
until the gentlemen sat down again to 
their wine was there any demand for the 
exercise of his art. 

Now, whether what followed had been 
prearranged, and old Duncan invited 
for the express purp0se of carrying it 
out, or whether it was conceived and 
executed on the spur of the moment, 
which seems less likely, I cannot tell, 
but the turn things now took would be 
hard to believe, were they dated in the 
present generation. Some of my elder 
readers, however, will, from their own 
knowledge of similar actions, grant like- 
lihood enough to my record. 

While the old man was piping as 
bravely as his lingering mortification 
would permit, the marquis interrupted 
his music to make him drink a large 
glass of sherry ; after which he requested 
him to play his loudest, that the gentle- 
men might hear what his pipes could do. 
At the same time he sent Malcolm with 
a message to the butler about some par- 
ticular wine he wanted. Malcolm went 
more than willingly, but lost a good 
deal of time from not knowing his way 
through the house. When he returned 
he found things frightfully changed. 


As soon as he was out of the room, 
and while the poor old man was blow- 
ing his hardest, in the fancy of rejoicing 
his hearers with the glorious music of the 
highland hills, one of the company — it 
was never known which, for each merrily 
accused the other — took a penknife, and 
going softly behind him, ran the sharp 
blade into the bag, and made a great 
slit, so that the wind at once rushed out, 
and the tune ceased without sob or wail. 
Not a laugh betrayed the cause of the 
catastrophe : in silent enjoyment the con- 
spirators sat watching his movements. 
For one moment Duncan was so as- 
tounded that he could not think ; the 
next he laid the instrument across his 
knees, and began feeling for the cause 
of the sudden collapse. Tears had 
gathered in the eyes that were of no use 
but to weep withal, and were slowly 
dropping. 

“She wass afrait, my lort and chentle- 
mans,” he said, with a quavering voice, 
“tat her pag will pe near her latter end ; 
put she pelieved she would pe living pe- 
yond her nainsel, my chentlemans.” 

He ceased abruptly, for his fingers had 
found the wound, and were prosecuting 
an inquiry : they ran along the smooth 
edges of the cut, and detected treachery. 
He gave a cry like that of a wounded 
animal, flung his pipes from him, and 
sprang to his feet, but forgetting a step 
below him, staggered forward a few paces 
and fell heavily. That instant Malcolm 
entered the room. He hurried in con- 
sternation to his assistance. When he 
had helped him up and seated him again 
on the steps, the old man laid his head 
on his boy’s bosom, threw his arms 
around his neck, and wept aloud. 

“Malcolm, my son,” he sobbed, “Tun- 
can is wronged in ta halls of ta stran- 
cher ; tey ’ll haf stapped his pest friend 
to ta heart, and och hone ! och hone ! 
she ’ll pe aall too plint to take fen- 
cheance. Malcolm, son of heroes, traw 
ta claymore of ta pard, and fall upon ta 
traitors. She’ll pe singing you ta onset, 
for ta pibroch is no more.” 

His quavering voice rose that instant 
in a fierce though feeble chant, and his 
hand flew to the hilt of his weapon. 


MALCOLM. 


Malcolm, perceiving from the looks 
of the men that things were as his grand- 
father had divined, spoke indignantly : 

“Ye oucht to tak shame to ca’ yersel’s 
gentlefowk, an’ play a puir blin’ man, 
wha was doin’ his best to please ye, sic 
an ill-faured trick.’’ 

As he spoke they made various signs 
to him not to interfere, but Malcolm paid 
them no heed, and turned to his grand- 
father, eager to persuade him to go home. 
They had no intention of letting him off 
yet, however. Acquainted — probably 
through his gamekeeper, who laid him • 
self out to amuse his master — with the 
piper’s peculiar antipathies. Lord Lossie 
now took up the game. 

“ It was too bad of you, Campbell,’’ 
he said, “to play the good old man such 
a dog’s trick.’’ 

At the word Campbell the piper shook 
off his grandson, and sprang once more 
to his feet, his head thrown back, and 
every inch of his body trembling with 
rage. 

“ She might haf known,’’ he screamed, 
half choking, “that a cursed tog of a 
Cawmill was in it !’’ 

He stood for a moment, swaying in 
every direction, as if the spirit within 
him doubted whether to cast his old body 
on the earth in contempt of its helpless- 
ness, or to fling it headlong on his foes. 
For that one moment silence filled the 
room. 

“You needn’t attempt to deny it; it 
really was too bad of you, Glenlyon,’’ 
said the marquis. 

A howl of fury burst from Duncan’s 
laboring bosom. His broadsword flash- 
ed from its sheath, and brokenly pant- 
ing out the words, “ Clenlyon ! Ta creat 
defil ! Haf I peen trinking with ta hell- 
hount, Clenlyon ?’’ — he would have run 
a Malay muck through the room with 
his huge weapon. But he was already 
struggling in the arms of his grandson, 
who succeeded at length in forcing from 
his bony grasp the hilt of the terrible clay- 
more. But as Duncan yielded his weap- 
on, Malcolm lost his hold on him. He 
darted away, caught his dirk — a blade 
of unusual length — from its sheath, and 
shot in the direction of the last word he 


77 

had heard. Malcolm dropped the sword 
and sprung after him. 

“ Gif her ta fillain by ta troat,’’ scream- 
ed the old man. “ She ’ll stap his pag ! 
She’ll cut his chanter in two ! She’ll pe 
toing it ! Who put ta creat-cran’son of 
Inverriggen should pe cutting ta troat of 
ta tog Clenlyon ?’’ 

As he spoke, he was running wildly 
about the room, brandishing his weapon, 
knocking over chairs, and sweeping bot- 
tles and dishes from the table. The clat- 
ter was tremendous, and the smile had 
faded from the faces of the men who had 
provoked the disturbance. The military 
youth looked scared; the Hanoverian 
pig-cheeks were the color of lead; the 
long lean man was laughing ^ike a skel- 
eton ; one of the lairds had got on the 
sideboard, and the other was making for 
the door with the bell-rope in his hand ; 
the marquis, though he retained his cool- 
ness, was yet looking^ a little anxious; 
the butler was peeping in at the door, 
with red nose and pale cheek-bones, the 
handle in his hand, in instant readiness 
to pop out again ; while Malcolm was 
after his grandfather, intent upon closing 
with him. The old man had just made 
a desperate stab at nothing half across 
the table, and was about to repeat it, 
when, spying danger to a fine dish, Mal- 
colm reached forward to save it. But 
the dish flew in splinters, and the dirk 
passing through the thick of Malcolm’s 
hand, pinned it to the table, where Dun- 
can, fancying he had at length stabbed 
Glenlyon, left it quivering. 

“Tere, Clenlyon!’’ he said, and stood 
trembling in the ebb of passion, and 
murmuring to himself something in 
Gaelic. 

Meantime, Malcolm had drawn the 
dirk from the table, and released his 
hand. The blood was streaming from 
it, and the marquis took his own hand- 
kerchief to bind it up; but the lad in- 
dignantly refused the attention, and kept 
holding the wound tight with his left 
hand. The butler, seeing Duncan stand 
quite still, ventured, with scared counte- 
nance, to approach the scene of destruc- 
tion. 

“Dinna gang near him,’’ cried Mai- 


78 


MALCOLM, 


colm. “He has his skene dhu yet, an’ 
in grips that’s warst ava.’’ 

Scarcely were the words out of his 
mouth when the black knife was out of 
Duncan’s stocking, and brandished aloft 
in his shaking fist. 

“Daddy!’’ cried Malcolm, “ye wad- 
na kill twa Glenlyons in ae day — wad 
ye ?’’ 

“ She would, my son Malcolm 1 — fifty 
of ta poars in one preath ! Tey are ta 
children of wrath, and tey haf to pe 
testructiont.’’ 

“ For an auld man ye hae killed enew 
for ae nicht,’’ said Malcolm, and gently 
took the knife from his trembling hand. 
“Ye maun come hame the noo.’’ 

“Is ta tog tead, then ?’’ asked Duncan 
eagerly. 

“Ow, na; he’s breathin’ yet,’’ answer- 
ed Malcolm. 

“She’ll not can co till ta tog will pe 
tead. Ta tog may want more killing.’’ 

“ What a horrible savage !’’ said one 
of the lairds, a justice of the peace. 
“He ought to be shut up in a mad- 
house.’’ 

“Gien ye set aboot shuttin’ up, sir, or 
my lord — I kenna whilk — ye’ll hae to 
begin nearer hame,’’ said Malcolm as 
he stooped to pick up the broadsword, 
and so complete his possession of the 
weapons. “An’ ye’ll please to hand in 
min’, that nane here is an injured man 
but my gran’father himsel’.’’ 

“Hey!’’ said the marquis; “what do 
you make of all my dishes ?’’ 

“’Deed, my lord, ye may comfort yer- 
sel’ that they warna dishes wi’ hams 
(drains) i’ them ; for sic ’s some scarce 
i’ the Hoose o’ Lossie.’’ 

“You’re a long-tongued rascal,’’ said 
the marquis. 

“A lang tongue may whiles be as 
canny as a lang spune, my lord ; an’ ye 
ken what that’s for?’’ 

The marquis burst into laughter. 

“ What do you make, then, of that 
horrible cut in your own hand ?’’ asked 
the magistrate. 

“I mak my ain business o’ ’t,’’ an- 
swered Malcolm. 

While -this colloquy passed, Duncan 
had been feeling about for his pipes : 


having found them he clasped them to 
his bosom like a hurt child. 

“ Come home, come home,’’ he said ; 
“your own pard has refenched you.’’ 

Malcolm took him by the arm and led 
him away. He went without a word, 
still clasping his wounded bagpipes to 
his bosom. 

“You’ll hear from me in the morning, 
my lad,’’ said the marquis in a kindly 
tone, as they were leaving the room. 

“ I hae no wuss to hear onything mair 
o’ yer lordship. Ye hae dune eneuch 
this nicht, my lord, to make ye ashamed 
o’ yersel’ till yer dyin’ day — ^gien ye hed 
ony pooer o’ shame left in ye.’’ 

The military youth muttered some- 
thing about insolence, and made a step 
toward him. Malcolm quitted his grand- 
father, and stepped again into the room. 

“Come on,’’ he said. 

“No, no,’’ interposed the marquis. 
“ Don’t you see the lad is hurt ?’’ 

“ Lat him come on,’’ said Malcolm ; 
“ I hae a soon’ han’. Here, my lord, tak 
the wapons, or the auld man ’ll get a grip 
o’ them again.’’ 

“I tell you no,” shouted Lord Lossie. 
“Fred, get out — ^will you ?“ 

The young gentleman turned on hjs 
heel, and Malcolm led his grandfather 
from the house without further molesta- 
tion. It was all he could do, however, 
to get him home. The old man’s strength 
was utterly gone. His knees bent trem- 
bling under him, and the arm which rest- 
ed on his grandson’s shook as with an 
ague-fit. Malcolm was glad indeed when 
at length he had him safe in bed, by 
which time his hand had swollen to a 
great size, and the suffering grown severe. 

Thoroughly exhausted by his late fierce 
emotions, Duncan soon fell into a trou- 
bled sleep, whereupon Malcolm went to 
Meg Partan, and begged her to watch 
beside him until he should return, in- 
forming her of the way his grandfather 
had been treated, and adding that he 
had gone into such a rage, that he fear- 
ed he would be ill in consequence ; and 
if he should be unable to do his morn- 
ing’s duty, it would almost break his 
heart. 

“ Eh !’’ said the Partaness, in a whis- 


MALCOLM. 


19 


per, as they parted at Duncan’s door, 
“a baad temper ’s a frichtsome thing. 
I’m sure the times I hae telled him it 
wad be the ruin o’ ’im !” 

To Malcolm’s gentle knock Miss 
Horn’s door was opened by Jean. 

“What d’ye wint at sic an oontimeous 
hoor,’’ she said, “whan honest fowk’s a’ 
i’ their nichtcaips ?’’ 

“ I want to see Miss Horn, gien ye 
please,’’ he answered. 

“ I s’ warran’ she’ll be in her bed an’ 
snorin’,’’ said Jean; “but I s’ gang an’ 
see.’’ 

Ere she went; however, Jean saw thit 
the kitchen door was closed, for, whether 
she belonged to the class “honest folk ’’ 
or not, Mrs. Catanach was in Miss Horn’s 
kitchen, and not in her nightcap. 

Jean returned presently with an invi- 
tation for Malcolm to walk up to the 
parlor. 

“ I hae gotten a sma’ mishanter. Miss 
Horn,’’ he said, as he entered; “an’ I 
thocht I cudna du better than come to 
you, ’cause ye can haud yer tongue, an’ 
that’s mair nor mony ane i’ the port o’ 
Portlossie can, mem.’’ 

The compliment, correct in fact as 
well as honest in intent, was not thrown 
away on Miss Horn, to whom it was the 
more pleasing that she could regard it 
as a just tribute. Malcolm told her all 
the story, rousing thereby a mighty in- 
dignation in her bosom, a great fire in 
her hawk-nose, and a succession of wild 
flashes in her hawk-eyes ; but when he 
showed her his hand, 

“Lord, Malcolm!’’ she cried; “it’s a 
mercy I was made wantin’ feelin’s, or I 
cudna hae bed the sicht. My puir bairn !’’ 

Then she rushed to the stair and 
shouted — 

“Jean, ye limmer! Jean ! Fess some 
het watter, an’ some linen cloots.’’ 

“ I hae nane o’ naither,’’ replied Jean 
from the bottom of the stair. 

“Mak up the fire an put on some wat- 
ter direckly. — I s’ fin’ some clooties,’’ she 
added, turning to Malcolm, “ — gien I 
sud rive the tail frae my best Sunday 
sark.’’ 

She returned with rags enough for a 
small hospital, and until the grumbling 


Jean brought the hot water, they sat and 
talked in the glimmering light of one 
long-beaked tallow candle. 

“ It’s a terrible hoose, yon o’ Lossie,’’ 
said Miss Horn ; “ and there’s been ter- 
rible things dune intill’t. The auld mar- 
kis was an ill man. I daurna say what 
he wadna hae dune, gien half the tales 
be true ’at they tell o’ ’im ; an’ the last 
ane was little better. This ane winna 
be sae ill, but it’s clear ’at he’s tarred wi’ 
the same stick.’’ 

“ I dinna think he means onything 
muckle amiss,’’ agreed Malcolm, whose 
wrath had by this time subsided a little, 
through the quieting influences of Miss 
Horn’s sympathy. “ He’s mair thoucht- 
less, I do believe, than ill-contrived — an’ 
a’ for ’s fun. He spak unco kin’-like to 
me, efterhin, but I cudna accep’ it, ye 
see, efter the w’y he had saired my dad- 
dy. But wadna ye hae thought he was 
auld eneuch to ken better by this time ?’’ 

“An auld fule ’s the warst fule ava’,’ 
said Miss Horn. “ But nothing o’ that 
kin’, be ’t as mad an’ pranksome as ever 
sic ploy could be, is to be made mention 
o’ aside the things ’at was mutit [mutter- 
ed) o’ ’s brither. I budena come ower 
them till a young laad like yersel’. They 
war never said straucht oot, min’ ye, but 
jist mintit at, like, wi’ a doon-draw o’ the 
broos an’ a wee side-shak’ o’ the heid, 
as gien the body wad say, ‘ I cud tell ye 
gien I daur.’ But I doobt mysel’ gien 
onything was kent, though muckle was 
mair nor suspeckit. An’ whaur there ’s 
reik, there maun be fire.’’ 

As she spoke she was doing her best, 
with many expressions of pity, for his 
hand. When she had bathed and bound 
it up, and laid it in a sling, he wished her 
good-night. 

Arrived at home, he found, to his dis- 
may, that things had not been going 
well. Indeed, while yet several houses 
off, he had heard the voices of the Par- 
tan’s wife and his grandfather in fierce 
dispute. The old man was beside him- 
self with anxiety about Malcolm; and 
the woman, instead of soothing him, was 
opposing everything he said, and irritat- 
ing him frightfully. The moment he 
entered, each opened a torrent of accu- 


8o 


MALCOLM, 


sations against the other, and it was with 
difficulty that Malcolm prevailed on the 
woman to go home. The presence of 
his boy soon calmed the old man, how- 
ever, and he fell into a troubled sleep — 
in which Malcolm, who sat by his bed 
all night, heard him, at intervals, now 
lamenting over the murdered of Glenco, 
now exulting in a stab that had reached 
the heart of Glenlyon, and now bewail- 
ing his ruined bagpipes. At length to- 
ward morning he grew quieter, and Mal- 
colm fell asleep in his chair. 


CHAPTER XX. 

ADVANCES. 

When he woke, Duncan still slept, 
and Malcolm, having got ready some 
tea for his grandfather’s, and a little 
brose for his own breakfast, sat down 
again by the bedside, and awaited the 
old man’s waking. 

The first sign of it that reached him 
was the feebly-uttered question — 

“Will ta tog be tead, Malcolm ?’’ 

“As sure ’s ye stabbit him,’’ answered 
Malcolm. 

“ Then she ’ll pe getting herself ready,’’ 
said Duncan, making a motion to rise. 

“What for, daddy?’’ 

“For ta hanging, my son,’’ answered 
Duncan coolly. 

“Time eneuch for that, daddy, whan 
they sen’ to tell ye,’’ returned Malcolm, 
cautious of revealing the facts of the 
case. 

“Ferry coot!’’ said Duncan, and fell 
asleep again. 

In a little while he woke with a start. 

“She ’ll be hafing an efil tream, my 
son Malcolm,’’ he said; “ — or it was ’ll 
pe more than a tream. Cawmill of 
Glenlyon, God curse him ! came to her 
pedside ; and he ’ll say to her, — ‘ Mac- 
Dhonuill,’ he said, for pein’ a tead man 
he would pe knowing my name, — ‘ Mac- 
Dhonuill,’ he said, ‘ what tid you ’ll pe 
meaning py turking my posterity ?’ And 
she answered and said to him, ‘I pray it 
had been yourself, you tamned Clen- 
lyon.’ And he said to me, ‘ It ’ll pe no 
coot wishing that ; it would pe toing you 


no coot to turk me, for I’m a tead man.* 
—‘And a tamned man,’ says herself, 
and would haf taken him py ta troat, 
put she couldn’t mofe. ‘Well, I’m not 
so sure of tat,’ says he, ‘ for I ’fe pecked 
all teir partons.’ — ‘And tid tey gif tern 
ta you, you tog?’ says herself. — ^‘Well, 
I’m not sure,’ says he ; ‘ anyhow, I’m not 
tamned ferry much yet.’ — ‘ She ’ll pe much 
sorry to hear it,’ says herself. And she 
took care aalways to pe calling him some 
paad name, so tat he shouldn’t say she 
’ll be forgifing him, whatever ta rest of 
tern might pe toing. ‘ Put what troubles 
m*e,’ says he, ‘ it ’ll not pe apout myself 
at aall.’ — ‘ That ’ll pe a wonder,’’ says 
her nain sel’ : ‘ and what may it pe apout, 
you cut-troat ?’ — ‘ It ’ll pe apout yourself,’ 
says he. ‘ Apout herself?’ — ‘ Yes ; apout 
yourself,’ says he. ‘ I’m sorry for you — 
for ta ting tat’s to be tone with him that 
killed a man aal pecaase he pore my 
name, and he wasn’t a son of mine at 
aall ! Tere is no pot in hell teep enough 
to put him in I’ — ‘ Then they must make 
haste and tig one,’ says herself, ‘ for she 
’ll pe hangt in a tay or two,’ — So she ’ll 
wake up, and beholt it was a tream !’’ 

‘ An’ no sic an ill dream efter a’, dad- 
dy !’’ said Malcolm. 

“Not an efil dream, my son, when it 
makes her aalmost wish that she hadn’t 
peen quite killing ta tog 1 Last night she 
would haf made a puoy of his skin like 
any other tog’s skin, and to-day — no, my 
son, it wass a ferry efil tream. And to 
be tolt tat ta creat tefil, Glenlyon herself, 
was not ferry much tamned ! — it wass a 
ferry efil tream, my son.’’ 

“Weel, daddy — maybe ye ’ll tak it for 
ill news, but ye killed naebody.’’ 

“Tid she’ll not trive her turk into ta 
tog ?’’ cried Duncan fiercely. “ Och 
hone ! och hone I — Then she ’s ashamed 
of herself for efer, \^hen she might have 
tone it. And it ’ll hafe to pe tone yet !’’ 

He paused a few moments, and then 
resumed : 

“And she ’ll not pe coing to be hangt ? 
— Maype ,that will pe petter, for you 
wouldn’t hafe liket to see your olt cran’- 
father to pe hangt, Malcolm, my son. 
Not that she would hafe minted it her- 
self in ^ch a coot caause, Malcolm 1 


MALCOLM. 


Put she tidn’t pe ferry happy after she tid 
think she had tone it, for you see he 
wasn’t ta ferry man his ownself, and tat 
must pe counted. But she tid kill some- 
thing ; what was it, Malcolm ?” 

“Ye sent a gran’ dish fleein’,’’ an- 
swered Malcolm. “ I s’ warran’ it cost 
a poun’, to jeedge by the gowd upo’ ’t.’’ 

“ She’ll hear a noise of preaking ; put 
she tid stap something soft.’’ 

“Ye stack yer durk intill my lord’s 
mahogany table,’’ said Malcolm. “It 
nott [needed) a guid rug [pull] to haul ’t 
oot.’’ 

“Then her arm has not lost aal its 
strength, Malcolm ! I pray ta taple had 
been ta rips of Clenlyon !’’ 

“Ye maunna pray nae sic prayers, 
daddy. Min’ upo’ what Glenlyon said 
to ye last nicht. Gien I was you I wadna 
hae a pot howkit express for mysel’ — 
doon yonner — i’ yon place ’at ye dreamed 
aboot.’’ 

“Well, I’ll forgife him a little, Malcolm 
— not ta one tat’s tead, but ta one tat 
tidn’t do it, you know. — Put how will she 
pe forgifing him for ripping her poor 
pag ? Och hone ! och hone ! No more 
musics for her tying tays, Malcolm ! Och 
hone ! och hone ! I shall co creeping to 
ta crafe with no loud noises to defy ta 
enemy. Her pipes is tumb for efer and 
efer. Och hone ! och hone !’’ 

The lengthening of his days had re- 
stored bitterness to his loss. 

“I’ll sune set the bag richt, daddy. 
Or, gien I canna do that, we ’ll get a 
new ane. Mony a pibroch ’ll come skir- 
lin’ oot o’ that chanter yet er’ a be dune.’’ 

They were interrupted by the uncere- 
monious entrance of the same footman 
who had brought the invitation. He 
carried a magnificent set of ebony pipes, 
wdth silver mountings. 

“A present from my lord, the marquis,’’ 
he said bumptiously, almost rudely, and 
laid them on the table. 

“ Dinna lay them there ; tak them frae 
that, or I ’ll fling them at yer poothered 
wig,’’ said Malcolm. — “It’s a stan’ o’ 
pipes,’’ he added, “ an’ that a gran’ ane, 
daddy.’’ 

“ Take tern away !’’ cried the old man, 
in a voice too feeble to support the load 
6 


of indignation it bore. “ She ’ll pe tak- 
ing no presents from marquis or tuke 
tat would pe teceifing old Tuncan, and 
making him trink with ta cursed Clen- 
lyon. Tell ta marquis he ’ll pe sending 
her Cray hairs with sorrow to ta crafe ; 
for she ’ll pe tishonored for efer and 
henceforth.’’ 

Probably pleased to be the bearer of 
a message fraught with so much amuse- 
ment, the man departed in silence with 
the pipes. 

The marquis, although the joke had 
threatened, and indeed so far taken, a 
serious turn, had yet been thoroughly 
satisfied with its success. The rage of 
the old man had been to his eyes ludi- 
crous in the extreme, and the anger of 
the young one so manly as to be even 
picturesque. He had even made a re- 
solve, half dreamy and of altogether im- 
probable execution, to do something for 
the fisher fellow. 

The pipes which he had sent as a so- 
latium to Duncan were a set that belong- 
ed to the house — ancient, and in the eyes 
of either connoisseur or antiquarian ex- 
ceedingly valuable ; but the marquis was 
neither the one nor the other, and did 
not in the least mind parting with them. 
As little did he doubt a propitiation 
through their means, was utterly unpre- 
pared for a refusal of his gift, and was 
nearly as much perplexed as annoyed 
thereat. 

For one thing, he could not under- 
stand such offence taken by one in Dun- 
can’s lowly position ; for although he 
had plenty of highland blood in his own 
veins, he had never lived in the High- 
lands, and understood nothing of the 
habits or feelings of the Gael. What 
was noble in him, however, did feel 
somewhat rebuked, and he was even a 
little sorry at having raised a barrier be- 
tween himself and the manly young 
fisherman, to whom he had taken a sort 
of liking from the first. 

Of the ladies in the drawing-room, to 
whom he had recounted the vastly amus- 
ing joke with all the graphic delineation 
for which he had been admired at court, 
none, although they all laughed, had ap- 
peared to enjoy the bad recital thorough- 


82 


MALCOLM. 


ly, except th'e bold-faced countess. Lady 
Florimel regarded the affair as undigni- 
fied at the best, was sorry for the old 
man, who must be mad, she thought, and 
was pleased only with the praises of her 
squire of low degree. The wound in his 
hand the marquis either thought too 
trifling to mention, or serious enough to 
have clouded the clear sky of frolic un- 
der which he desired the whole trans- 
action to be viewed. 

They were seated at their late break- 
fast when the lackey passed the window 
on his return from his unsuccessful mis- 
sion, and the marquis happened to see 
him, carrying the rejected pipes. He 
sent for him, and heard his report, then 
with a quick nod dismissed him — his 
way when angry — and sat silent. 

“Wasn’t it spirited — in such poor 
people too ?’’ said Lady Florimel, the 
color rising in her face, and her eyes 
sparkling. 

“ It was damned impudent,” said the 
marquis. 

“ I think it was damned dignified,” 
said Lady Florimel. 

The marquis stared. The visitors, 
after a momentary silence, burst into a 
great laugh. 

“I wanted to see,” said Lady Florimel 
calmly, “whether / couldn’t swear if I 
tried. I don’t think it tastes nice. I 
sha’n’t take to it, I think.” 

“You’d better not in my presence, my 
lady,” said the marquis, his eyes spark- 
ling with fun. 

“I shall certainly not do it out of 
your presence, my lord,” she returned. 
“ — Now I think of it,” she went on, “I 
know what I will do : every time you 
say a bad word in my presence, I shall 
say it after you. I sha’n’t mind who’s 
there — parson or magistrate. Now you’ll 
see.” 

“You will get into the habit of it.” 

“ Except you get out of the habit of it 
first, papa,” said the girl, laughing mer- 
rily. 

“You confounded little Amazon !” said 
her father. . 

“But what’s to be done about those 
confounded pipes ?” she resumed. “You 
can’t allow such people to serve you so ! 


Return your presents, indeed ! — Suppose 
I undertake the business ?” 

“ By all means. What will you do ?” 

“ Make them take them, of course. It 
would be quite horrible never to be quits 
with the old lunatic.” 

“As you please, puss.” 

“Then you put yourself in my hands, 
papa ?” 

“ Yes ; only you must mind what you’re 
about, you know.” 

“That I will, and make them mind 
too,” she answered, and the subject was 
dropped. 

Lady Florimel counted upon her in- 
fluence with Malcolm, and his again with 
his grandfather ; but, careful of her dig- 
nity, she would not make direct advances ; 
she would wait an opportunity of speak- 
ing to him. But, although she visited 
the sand-hill almost every morning, an 
opportunity was not afforded her. Mean- 
while, the state of Duncan’s bag and of 
Malcolm’s hand forbidding, neither pipes 
were played nor gun was fired to arouse 
marquis or burgess. When a fortnight 
had thus passed. Lady Florimel grew 
anxious concerning the justification of 
her boast, and the more so that her father 
seemed to avoid all reference to it. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

MEDIATION. 

At length it was clear to Lady Flori- 
mel that if her father had not forgotten 
her undertaking, but was, as she be- 
lieved, expecting from her some able 
stroke of diplomacy, it was high time 
that something should be done to save 
her credit. Nor did she forget that the 
unpiped silence of the royal burgh was 
the memento of a practical joke of her 
father, so cruel that a piper would not 
accept the handsome propitiation offered 
on its account by a marquis. 

On a lovely evening, therefore, the 
sunlight lying slant on waters that heaved 
and sunk in a flowing tide, now catching 
the gold on lifted crests, now losing it in 
purple hollows. Lady Florimel found her- 
self, for the first time, walking from the 
lower gate toward the Seaton. Round- 


MALCOLM. 


ing the west end of the village, she came 
to the sea front, where, encountering a 
group of children, she requested to be 
shown the blind piper’s cottage. Ten 
of them started at once to lead the 
way, and she was presently knocking at 
the half-open door, through which she 
could not help seeing the two at their 
supper of dry oat-cake and still drier 
skim-milk cheese, with a jug of cold 
water to wash it down. Neither, having 
just left the gentlemen at their wine, 
could she help feeling the contrast be- 
tween the dinner just over at the House 
and the meal she now beheld. 

At the sound of her knock, Malcolm, 
who was seated with his back to the 
door, rose to answer the appeal ; — the 
moment he saw her, the blood rose from 
his heart to his cheek in similar response. 
He opened the door wide, and in low, 
something tremulous tones, invited her 
to enter; then caught up a chair, dusted 
it with his bonnet, and placed it for her, 
by the window, where a red ray of the 
setting sun fell on a huge-flowered hy- 
drangea. Her quick eye caught sight 
of his bound-up hand. 

“ How have you hurt your hand?” she 
asked kindly. 

Malcolm made signs that prayed for 
silence, and pointed to his grandfather. 
But it was too late. 

‘‘Hurt your hand, Malcolm, my son?” 
cried Duncan, with surprise and anxiety 
mingled. ‘‘ How will you pe doing that ?” 

‘‘ Here’s a bonny yoong leddy come to 
see ye, daddy,” said Malcolm, seeking to 
turn the question aside. 

‘‘She’ll pe ferry clad to see ta ponny 
young laty, and she’s creatly obleeched 
for ta honor ; put if ta ponny young laty 
will be excusing her — what’ll pe hurting 
your hand, Malcolm?” 

‘‘ I’ll tell ye efterhin, daddy. This is 
my Leddy Florimel, frae the Hoose.” 

“Hm!” said Duncan, the pain of his 
insult keenly renewed by the mere men- 
tion of the scene of it. “Put,” he went 
on, continuing aloud the reflections of a 
moment of silence, ‘‘she’ll pe a laty, and 
it’s not to pe laid to her charch. Sit 
town, my laty. Ta poor place is your 
own.” 


83 

But Lady Florimel was already seated, 
and busy in her mind as to how she 
could best enter on the object of her 
visit. The piper sat silent, revolving a 
painful suspicion with regard to Mal- 
colm’s hurt. 

“So you won’t forgive my father, Mr. 
MacPhail ?” said Lady Florimel. 

“ She would forgife any man put two 
men,” he answered, “ — Clenlyon, and 
ta man, whoefer he might be, who would 
put upon her ta tiscrace of trinking in 
his company.” 

“ But you’re quite mistaken,” said Lady 
Florimel, in a pleading tone. “I don’t 
believe my father knows the gentleman 
you speak of.” 

“ Chentleman !” echoed Duncan. “ He 
is a tog ! — No, he is no tog : togs is coot. 
He is a mongrel of a fox and a volf!” 

"There was no Campbell at our table 
that evening,” persisted Lady Florimel. 

“Then who told Tuncan MacPhail a 
lie ?” 

“ It was nothing but a joke — indeed !” 
said the girl, beginning to feel humiliated. 

“ It wass a paad choke, and might have 
peen ta hanging of poor Tuncan,” said 
the piper. 

Now Lady Florimel had heard a rumor 
of some one having been hurt in the 
affair of the joke, and her quick wits in- 
stantly brought that and Malcolm’s hand 
together. 

“It might have been,” she said, risk- 
ing a miss for the advantage. “ It was 
well that you hurt nobody but your own 
grandson.” 

“ Oh, my leddy !” cried Malcolm with 
despairing remonstrance; “ — an’ me 
haudin’ ’t frae him a’ this time ! Ye sud 
ha’ considert an’ auld man’s feelin’s ! 
He’s as blin’ ’s a mole, my leddy !” 

“His feelings!” retorted the girl an- 
grily. “He ought to know- the mischief 
he does in his foolish rages.” 

Duncan had risen, and was now feel- 
ing his way across the room. Having 
reached his grandson, he laid hold of 
his head and pressed it to his bosom. 

“ Malcolm !” he said, in a broken and 
hollow voice, not to be recognized as his, 
“Malcolm, my eagle of the crag! my 
hart of the heather ! was it yourself she 


84 


MALCOLM. 


stapped with her efil hand, my son ? 
Tid she’ll pe hurting her own poy ? — 
She’ll nefer wear turk more. Och hone ! 
Och hone !” 

He turned, and, with bowed head 
seeking his chair, seated himself and 
wept. 

Lady Florimel’s anger vanished. She 
was by his side in a moment, with her 
lovely young hand on the bony expanse 
of his, as it covered his face. On the 
other side, Malcolm laid his lips to his 
ear, and whispered with soothing ex- 
postulation — 

“It’s maist as weel ’s ever, daddy. 
It’s nane the waur. It was but a bit o’ 
a scart. It’s nae worth twise thinkin’ o’.’’ 

“ Ta turk went trough it, Malcolm ! It 
went into ta table ! She knows now ! 
O Malcolm ! Malcolm ! would to God 
she had killed herself pefore she hurted 
her poy !’’ 

He made Malcolm sit down beside 
him, and taking the wounded hand in 
both of his, sunk into a deep silence, 
utterly forgetful of the presence of Lady 
Florimel, who retired to her chair, kept 
silence also, and waited. 

“ It was not a coot choke,’’ he mur- 
mured at length, “upon an honest man, 
and might pe calling herself a chentle- 
man. A rache is not a choke. To put 
her in a rache was not coot. See to it. 
And it was a ferry paad choke, too, to 
make a pig hole in her poor pag ! Och 
hone ! och hone ! — Put I’m clad Clenly- 
on was not there, for she was too plind 
to kill him.’’ 

“ But you will surely forgive my father, 
when he wants to make it up ! Those 
pipes have been in the family for hun- 
dreds of years,’’ said Florimel. 

“ Her own pipes has peen in her own 
family for five or six chenerations at 
least,’’ said Duncan. “ — And she was 
wondering why her poy tidn’t pe mend- 
ing her pag ! My poor poy ! Och hone ! 
Och hone !’’ 

“We’ll get a new bag, daddy,’’ said 
Malcolm. “ It’s been lang past men’in’ 
wi’ auld age.’’ 

“And then you will be able to play 
together,’’ urged Lady Florimel. 

Duncan’s resolution was visibly shaken 


by the suggestion. He pondered for a 
while. At last he opened his mouth sol- 
emnly, and said, with the air of one who 
had found a way out of a hitherto im- 
passable jungle of difficulty: 

“ If her lord marquis will come to 
Tuncan’s house, and say to Tuncan it 
was put a choke and he is sorry for it, 
then Tuncan will shake hands with ta 
marquis, and take ta pipes.’’ 

A smile of pleasure lighted up Mal- 
colm’s face at the proud proposal. Lady 
Florimel smiled also, but with amuse- 
ment. 

“Will my laty take Tuncan’s message 
to my lord ta marquis ?’’ asked the old 
man. 

Now Lady Florimel had inherited her 
father’s joy in teasing ; and the thought 
of carrying him such an overture was 
irresistibly delightful. 

“I will take it,’’ she said. “But what 
if he should be angry ?’’ 

“If her lord pe angry, Tuncan is angry 
too,’’ answered the piper. 

Malcolm followed Lady Florimel to 
the door. 

“Put it as saft as ye can, my leddy,’’ 
he whispered. “ I canna bide to anger 
fowk mair than maun be.’’ 

“I shall give the message precisely as 
your grandfather gave it to me,’’ said 
Florimel, and walked away. 

While they sat at dinner the next even- 
ing, she told her father, from the head 
of the table, all about her visit to the 
piper, and ended with the announce- 
ment of the condition — word for word — • 
on which the old man would consent to 
a reconciliation. 

Could such a proposal have come from 
an equal whom he had insulted, the mar- 
quis would hardly have waited for a chal- 
lenge : to have done a wrong was noth- 
ing ; to confess it would be a disgrace. 
But here the offended party was of such 
a ludicrously low condition, and the pro- 
posal therefore so ridiculous, that it struck 
the marquis merely as a yet more amusing 
prolongation of the joke. Hence his re- 
ception of it was with uproarious laugh- 
ter, in which all his visitors joined. 

“Damn the old wind-bag!’’ said the 
I marquis. 


MALCOLM. 


85 


“ Damn the knife that made the mis- 
chief!” saic* Lady Florimel. 

When the merriment had somewhat 
subsided, Lord Meikleham, the youth of 
soldierly aspect, would have proposed 
whipping the highland beggar, he said, 
/were it not for the probability the old 
I clothes-horse would fall to pieces ; w'here- 
^ upon Lady Florimel recommended him 
to try it on the young fisherman, who 
might possibly hold together; whereat 
the young lord looked both mortified 
and spiteful. 

I believe some compunction, perhaps 
even admiration, mingled itself, in this 
'^case, with Lord Lossie’s relish of an odd 
and amusing situation, and that he was 
inclined to compliance with the con- 
ditions of atonement partly for the sake 
of mollifying the wounded spirit of the 
highlander. He turned to his daughter 
and said, — 

“ Did you fix an hour, Flory, for your 
poor father to make ame7tde honorable T' 

‘‘No, papa; I did not go so far as 
that.” 

The marquis kept a few moments’ 
grave silence. 

‘‘Your lordship is surely not medi- 
tating such a solecism!” said Mr. Mor- 
rison, the justice-laird. 

‘‘ Indeed I am,” said the marquis. 

‘‘It would be too great a condescen- 
sion,” said Mr. Cavins ; ‘‘and your lord- 
ship will permit me to doubt the wisdom 
of it. These fishermen form a class by 
themselves ; they are a rough set of men, 
and only too ready to despise authority. 
You will not only injure the prestige of 
your rank, my lord, but expose yourself 
to endless imposition.” 

‘‘The spirit moves me, and we are 
commanded not to quench the spirit,” 
rejoined the marquis with a merry laugh, 
little thinking that he was actually de- 
scribing what was going on in him — that 
the spirit of good concerning which he 
jested was indeed not only working in 
him, but gaining on him, in his resolu- 
tion of that moment. 

‘‘Come, Flory,” said the marquis, to 
whom it gave a distinct pleasure to fly in 
the face of advice, ‘‘we’ll go at once, 
and have it over.” 


So they set out together for the Seaton, 
followed by the bagpipes, carried by the 
same servant as before, and were re- 
ceived by the overjoyed Malcolm, and 
ushered into his grandfather’s presence. 

Whatever may have been the project- 
ed attitude of the marquis, the moment 
he stood on the piper’s floor, the gene- 
rosus, that is the gentleman, in him, got 
the upper hand, and his behavior to the 
old man was not polite merely, but re- 
spectful. At no period in the last twenty 
years had he been so nigh the kingdom 
of heaven as he was now when making 
his peace with the blind piper. 

When Duncan heard his voice, he 
rose with dignity and made a stride or 
two toward the door, stretching forth his 
long arm to its full length, and spreading 
wide his great hand with the brown palm 
upward. 

‘‘Her nainsel will pe proud to see my 
lord ta marquis under her roof,” he said. 

The visit itself had already sufficed to 
banish all resentment from his soul. 

The marquis took the proffered hand 
kindly. 

‘‘I have come to apologize,” he said. 

‘‘ Not one vord more, my lort, I peg,” 
interrupted Duncan. ‘‘ My lort is come, 
out of his own cootness, to pring her a 
creat kift ; for he’ll pe hearing of ta sad 
accident which pefell her poor pipes one 
efening lately. Tey was ferry old, my 
lort, and easily hurt.” 

‘‘ I am sorry — ” said the marquis, but 
again Duncan interrupted him. 

‘‘I am clad, my lort,” he said, ‘‘for it 
prings me ta creat choy. If my lady 
and your lortship will honor her poor 
house py sitting town, she will haf ta 
pleasure of pe offering them a little 
music.” 

His hospitality would give them of the 
best he had ; but ere the entertainment 
was over, the marquis judged himself 
more than fairly punished by the pipes 
for all the wrong he had done the piper. 

They sat down, and, at a sign from his 
lordship, the servant placed his charge 
in Duncan’s hands, and retired. The 
piper received the instrument with a 
proud gesture of gratification, felt it all 
over, screwed at this and that for a mo- 


86 


MALCOLM. 


ment, then filled the .great bag gloriously 
full. The next instant a scream invaded 
the astonished air fit to rival the skirl 
produced by the towzie tyke of Kirk- 
Alloway ; another instant, and the piper 
was on his legs, as full of pleasure and 
pride as his bag' of wind, strutting up 
and down the narrow chamber like a 
turkey-cock before his hens, and turn- 
ing ever, after precisely so many strides, 
with a grand gesture and mighty sweep, 
as if he too had a glorious tail to mind, 
and was bound to keep it ceaselessly 
quivering to the tremor of the reed in 
the throat of his chanter. 

Malcolm, erect behind their visitors, 
gazed with admiring eyes at every mo- 
tion of his grandfather. To one who 
had from earliest infancy looked up to 
him with reverence, there was nothing 
ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in 
all that to other eyes too evidently re- 
vealed the vanity of the piper: Malcolm 
regarded it all only as making up the 
orthodox mode of playing the pipes. It 
was indeed well that he could not see 
the expression upon the faces of those 
behind whose chairs he stood, while for 
moments that must have seemed min- 
utes they succurnbed to the wild uproar 
which issued from those splendid pipes. 
On an opposite hill-side, with a valley 
between, it would have sounded poetic ; 
in a charging regiment, none could have 
wished for more inspiriting battle-strains ; 
even in a great hall, inspiring and guid- 
ing the merry reel, it might have been in 
place and welcome ; but in a room of 
ten feet by twelve, with a wooden ceil- 
ing, acting like a drum-head, at the 
height of seven feet and a half! — it was 
little below torture to the marquis and 
Lady Florimel. Simultaneously they 
rose to make their escape. 

“My lord and my leddy maun be 
gauin’, daddy,” cried Malcolm. 

Absorbed in the sound which his lungs 
created and his fingers modulated, the 
piper had forgotten all about his visit- 
ors ; but the moment his grandson’s 
voice reached him, the tumult ceased ; 
he took the poit-vent from his lips, and 
with sightless eyes turned full on Lord 
Lossie, said in a low earnest voice — 


“ My lort, she ’ll pe ta craandest staand 
o’ pipes she efer blew, anc^ proud and 
thankful she’ll pe to her lort marquis, 
and to ta Lort of lorts, for ta kift. Ta 
pipes shall co town from cheneration to 
cheneration to ta ent of time ; yes, my lort, 
until ta loud cry of tern pe trownt in ta 
roar of ta trump of ta creat archanchel, 
when he’ll pe setting one foot on ta laand, 
and ta other foot upon ta sea, and Clen- 
lyon shall pe cast into ta lake of fire.” 

He ended with a low bow. They shook 
hands with him, thanked him for his 
music, wished him good-night, and, with 
a kind nod to Malcolm, left the cottage. 

Duncan resumed his playing the mo- 
ment they were out of the house, and 
Malcolm, satisfied of his well-being for 
a couple of hours at least — he had been 
music-starved so long — went also out, in 
quest of a little solitude. 


CHAPTER XXII. - 
WHENCE AND WHITHER? 

He wandered along the shore on the 
land side of the mound, with a favorite 
old book of Scottish ballads in his hand, 
every now and then stooping to gather 
a sea-anemone — a white flower some- 
thing like a wild geranium, with a faint 
sweet smell — or a small, short-stalked 
harebell, or a red daisy, as large as a 
small primrose ; for along the coast there, 
on cliff or in sand, on rock or in field, 
the daisies are remarkable for size, and 
often not merely tipped, but dyed through- 
out with a deep red. 

He had gathered a bunch of the finest, 
and had thrown himself down on the side 
of the dune, whence, as he lay, only the 
high road, the park wall, the temple of 
the winds, and the blue sky were visible. 
The vast sea, for all the eye could tell, 
was nowhere — not a ripple of it was to 
be seen, but the ear was filled with the 
night gush and flow of it. A sweet wind 
was blowing, hardly blowing, rather gli- 
ding, like a slumbering river, from the 
west. The sun had vanished, leaving a 
ruin of gold and rose behind him, gradu- 
ally fading into dull orange and lead and 
blue sky and stars. There was light 


MALCOLM. 


87 


enough to read by, but he never opened 
his book. He was thinking over some- 
thing Mr. Graham had said to him a few 
days before, namely, that all impatience 
of monotony, all weariness of best things 
even, are but signs of the eternity of our 
nature — the broken human fashions of 
the divine everlastingness. 

* * :)e 5)c 

“ I dinna ken whaur it comes frae,” 
said a voice above him. 

He looked up. On the ridge of the 
mound, the whole of his dwarfed form 
relieved against the sky and looking large 
in the twilight, stood the mad laird, reach- 
ing out his forehead toward the west, with 
his arms expanded as if to meet the over- 
coming wind. 

"Naebody kens whaur the win’ comes 
frae, or whaur it gangs till,” said Mal- 
colm. “Ye’re no a hair waur aff nor 
ither fowk, there, laird.” 

' “ Does’t come frae a guid place, or frae 
an ill ?” said the laird, doubtingly. 

“ It’s saft an’ kin’ly i’ the fin’ o’ ’t,” 
returned Malcolm suggestively, rising and 
joining the laird on the top of the dune, 
and like him spreading himself out to the 
western air. 

The twilight had deepened, merging 
into such night as the summer in that 
region knows — a sweet pale memory of 
the past day. The sky was full of sparkles 
of pale gold in a fathomless blue ; there 
was no moon ; the darker sea lay quiet 
below, with only a murmur about its lip, 
and fitfully reflected the stars. The soft 
wind kept softly blowing. Behind them 
shone a light at the harbor’s mouth, and 
a twinkling was here and there visible in 
the town above ; but all was as still as 
if there were no life save in the wind 
and the sea and the stars. The whole 
feeling was as if something had been 
finished in heaven, and the outmost rip- 
ples of the following rest had overflowed 
and were now pulsing faintly and dream- 
ily across the bosom of the laboring earth, 
with feeblest suggestion of the mighty 
peace beyond. Alas, words can do so 
little ! even such a night is infinite. 

“Ay,” answered the laird; “but it 
makes me dowfart [tne lane holy') like, i’ 
the inside.” “ 


“Some o’ the best things does that,” 
said Malcolm. “ I think a kiss frae my 
mither wad gar me greet.” 

He knew the laird’s peculiarities well ; 
but in the thought of his mother had for- 
gotten the antipathy of his. companion to 
the word. Stewart gave a moaning cry, 
put his fingers in his ears, and glided 
down the slope of the dune seaward. 

Malcolm was greatly distressed. He 
had a regard for the laird far beyond 
pity, and could not bear the thought of 
having inadvertently caused him pain. 
But he dared not follow him, for that 
would be but to heighten the anguish of 
the tortured mind and the suffering of 
the sickly frame ; for, when pursued, he 
would accomplish a short distance at 
an incredible speed, then drop suddenly 
and lie like one dead. Malcolm therefore 
threw off his heavy boots, and starting 
at full speed along the other side of the 
dune, made for the bored craig ; his ob- 
ject being to outrun the laird without be- 
ing seen by him, and so, doubling the 
rock, return with leisurely steps, and 
meet him. Sweetly the west wind whis- 
tled about his head as he ran. In a few 
moments he had rounded the rock, to- 
ward which the laird was still running, 
but now more slowly. The tide was 
high and came near its foot, leaving but 
a few yards of passage between, in which 
space they approached each other, Mal- 
colm with sauntering step, as if strolling 
homeward. Lifting his bonnet, a token 
of respect he never omitted when he 
met the mad laird, he stood aside in the 
narrow way. Mr. Stewart stopped ab- 
ruptly, took his fingers from his ears, and 
stared in perplexity. 

“ It’s a richt bonny nicht, laird,” said 
Malcolm. 

The poor fellow looked hurriedly be- 
hind him, then stared again, then made 
gestures backward, and next pointed at 
Malcolm with rapid pokes of his fore- 
finger. Bewilderment had brought on 
the impediment in his speech, and all 
Malcolm could distinguish in the bab- 
bling efforts at utterance which followed 
were the words, — “Twa o’ them! Twa 
o’ them ! Twa o’ them !” often and hur- 
riedly repeated. 


88 


MALCOLM. 


"It’s a fine, saft*sleekit win’, laird,’’ 
said Malcolm, as if they were meeeting 
for the first time that night. " I think it 
maun come frae the blue there, ayont 
the stars. There’s a heap o’ wonnerfu’ 
things there, they tell me ; an’ whiles a 
strokin’ win,’ an’ whiles a rosy smell, 
an’ whiles a bricht licht, an’ whiles, they 
say, an auld yearnin’ sang ’ll brak oot, 
an’ wanner awa’ doon, an’ gang flittin’ 
an’ fleein’ amang the sair herts o’ the 
men an’ women fowk ’at canna get 
things putten richt.’’ 

" I think there are two fools of them !’’ 
said the marquis, referring to the words 
of the laird. 

He was seated with Lady Florimel on 
the town-side of the rock, hidden from 
them by one sharp corner. They had 
seen the mad laird coming, and had re- 
cognized Malcolm’s voice. 

“ I dinna ken whaur I come frae,’’ 
burst from the laird, the word whaur 
drawn out and emphasized almost to a 
howl ; and as he spoke he moved on 
again, but gently now, toward the rocks 
of the Scaurnose. Anxious to get him 
thoroughly soothed before they parted, 
Malcolm accompanied him. They walk- 
ed a little way side by side in silence, 
the laird every now and then heaving 
his head like a fretted horse toward the 
sky, as if he sought to shake the heavy 
burden from his back, straighten out his 
poor twisted spine, and stand erect like 
his companion. 

‘‘Ay!’’ Malcolm began again, as if 
he had in the mean time been thinking 
over the question, and was now assured 
upon it, ‘‘the win’ 7nauti come frae yont 
the stars; for dinna ye min’, laird — ? 
Ye was at the kirk last Sunday — wasna 
ye ?’’ 

The laird nodded an affirmative, and 
Malcolm went on. 

‘‘An’ didna ye hear the minister read 
frae the buik ’at hoo ilka guid an’ ilka 
perfit gift was frae abune, an’ cam frae 
the Father o’ lichts?’’ 

“Father o’ lichts!’’ repeated the laird, 
and looked up at the bright stars. ‘‘ I 
dinna ken whaur /cam frae. I hae nae 
father. I hae only a ... I hae only a 
wuman.’’ 


The moment he had said the word, he 
began to move his head from side to 
side like a scared animal seeking where 
to conceal itself. 

"The Father o’ lichts is your father 
an’ mine — the father o’ a’ o’ ’s,’’ said 
Malcolm. 

‘‘O’ a’ guid fowk, I daursay,’' said the 
laird, with a deep and quivering sigh, 

"Mr. Graham says — o’ a’body,’’ re- 
turned Malcolm, " — ^guid an’ ill; — o’ the 
guid to haud them guid an’ mak them 
better — o’ the ill to mak them guid.’’ 

"Eh! gien that war true!’’ said the 
laird. 

They walked on in silence for a min- 
ute. All at once the laird threw up his 
hands, and fell flat on his face on the 
sand, his poor hump rising skyward 
above his head. Malcolm thought he 
had been seized with one of the fits to 
which he was subject, and knelt down 
beside him, to see if he could do any- 
thing for him. Then he found he was 
praying : he heard him — he could but 
just hear him — murmuring over and 
over, all but inaudibly, "Father o’ lichts! 
Father o’ lichts ! Father o’ lichts !’’ It 
seemed as if no other word dared mingle 
itself with that cry. Maniac or not, the 
mood of the man was supremely sane, 
and altogether too sacred to disturb. 
Malcolm retreated a little way, sat down 
in the sand and watched beside him. It 
was a solemn time — the full tide lapping 
up on the long yellow sand from the wide 
sea darkening out to the dim horizon ; 
the gentle wind blowing through the 
molten darkness ; overhead, the erreat 
vault without arch or keystone, of dim 
liquid blue, and sown with worlds so far 
removed they could only shine ; and on 
the shore, the centre of all the cosmic 
order, a misshapen heap of man, a tu- 
mulus in which lay buried a live and 
lovely soul ! The one pillar of its chap- 
ter-house had given way, and the down- 
rushing ruin had so crushed and distort- 
ed it, that thenceforth until some resur- 
rection should arrive, disorder and mis- 
shape must appear to it the law of the 
universe, and loveliness but the passing 
dream of a brain glad to deceive its own 
misery, and so to fancy it had received 


MALCOLM. 


89 


from above what it had itself generated 
of its own poverty from below. To the 
mind’s eye of Malcolm, the little hump 
on the sand was heaved to the stars, 
higher than ever Roman tomb or Egyp- 
tian pyramid, in silent appeal to the 
sweet heavens, a dumb prayer for pity, 
a visible groan for the resurrection of the 
body. For a few minutes he sat as still 
as the prostrate laird. 

But bethinking himself that his grand- 
father would not go to bed until he went 
back, also that the laird was in no danger, 
as the tide was now receding, he resolved 
to go and get the old man to bed, and 
then return. For somehow he felt in his 
heart that he ought not to leave him 
alone. He could not enter into his strife 
to aid him, or come near him in any 
closer way than watching by his side 
until his morning dawned, or at least the 
waters of his flood assuaged, yet what 
he could he must ; he would wake with ' 
him in his conflict. 

He rose and ran for the bored craig, 
through which lay the straight line to 
his abandoned boots. 

As he approached the rock, he heard 
the voices of Lord Lossie and Lady 
Florimel, who, although the one had not 
yet verified her being, the other had 
almost ruined his, were nevertheless en- 
joying the same thing, the sweetness of 
the night, together. Not hearing Mal- 
colm’s approach, they went on talking, 
and as he was passing swiftly through 
the bore, he heard these words from the 
marquis — 

“The world’s an ill-baked cake, Flory, 
and all that a — woman, at least, can do, 
is to cut as large a piece of it as possible, 
for immediate use.’’ 

The remark being a general one, Mal- 
colm cannot be much blamed if he stood 
with one foot lifted to hear Florimel’s 
reply. 

“ If it ’s an ill-baked one, papa,’’ she 
returned, “ I think it would be better to 
cut as small a piece of it as will serve 
for immediate use.’’ 

Malcolm was delighted with her an- 
swer, never thinking whether it came 
from her head or her heart, for the two 
were at one in himself. 


As soon as he appeared on the other 
side of the rock, the marquis challenged 
him : 

“Who goes there ?’’ he said. 

“Malcolm MacPhail, my lord.’’ 

“You rascal !’’ said his lordship, good- 
humoredly ; “you’ve been listening !’’ 

“No muckle, my lord. I hard but a 
word apiece. An’ I maun say my led- 
dy had the best o’ the loagic.’’ 

“ My leddy generally has, I suspect,’’ 
laughed the marquis. “How long have 
you been in the rock there ?’’ 

“ No ae meenute, my lord. I flang aff 
my butes to rin efter a freen’, an’ that’s 
hoo ye didna hear me come up. I’m 
gaein’ efter the77i noo, to gang home i’ 
them. Guid-nicht, my lord. Guid-nicht, 
my leddy.’’ 

He turned and pursued his way ; but 
Florimel’s face glimmering through the 
night, went with him as he ran. 

He told his grandfather how he had 
left the mad laird lying on his face on 
the sands between the bored craig and 
the rocks of the promontory, and said 
he would like to go back to him. 

“ He ’ll pe hafing a fit, poor man !’’ 
said Duncan. “ — Yes, my son, you 
must CO to him, and do your pest for 
him. After such ah honor as we’fe had 
this day, we mustn’t pe forgetting our 
poor neighbors. Will you pe taking to 
him a trop of uisgebeatha ?’’ 

“He taks naething o’ that kin’,’’ said 
Malcolm. 

He could not tell him that the mad- 
man, as men called him, lay wrestling 
in prayer with the Father of lights. The 
old highlander was not irreverent, but 
the thing would have been unintelligible 
to him. He could readily have believed 
that the supposed lunatic might be favor- 
ed beyond ordinary mortals ; that at that 
very moment, lost in his fit, he might be 
rapt in a vision of the future — a wave of 
time, far off as yet from the souls of other 
men, even now rolling over his ; but that 
a soul should seek after vital content by 
contact with its Maker, was an idea be- 
longing to a region which, in the high- 
lander’s being, lay as yet an unwatered 
desert, an undiscovered land, whence 
even no faintest odor had been wafted 


90 


MALCOLM, 


across the still air of surprised contem- 
plation. 

About the time when Malcolm once 
more ‘sped through the bored craig, the 
marquis and Lady Florimel were walk- 
ing through the tunnel on their way 
home, chatting about a great bMl they 
were going to give the tenants. 

He found the laird where he had left 
him, and thought at first hfe must now 
surely be asleep ; but once more bending 
over him, he could hear him still mur- 
muring at intervals, “Father o’ lichts ! 
Father o’ lichts !’’ 

Not less compassionate, and more 
sympathetic than Eliphaz or Bildad or 
Zophar, Malcolm again took his place 


near him, and sat watching by him until 
the gray dawn began in the east. Then 
all at once the laird rose to his feet, and 
without a look on either side walked 
steadily away toward the promontory. 
Malcolm rose also, and gazed after him 
until he vanished amongst the rocks, no 
motion of his distorted frame witnessing 
other than calmness of spirit. So his 
watcher returned in peace through the 
cool morning air to the side of his slum- 
bering grandfather. 

No one in the Seaton of Portlossie 
ever dreamed of locking door or window 
at night. 



-v". 


CHAPTER XXIII, 
ARMAGEDDON. 

T he home season of the herring-fish-’ 
ery was to commence a few days 
after the occurrences last recorded. The 
boats had all returned from other sta- 
tions, and the little harbor was one crowd 
of stumpy masts, each with its halliard, 
the sole cordage visible, rove through the 
top of it, for the hoisting of a lug sail, 
tanned to a rich red brown. From this 
underwood towered aloft the masts of a 
coasting schooner, discharging its load 
of coal at the little quay. Other boats 
lay drawn up on the beach in front of 
the Seaton, and beyond it on the other 
side of the burn. Men and women were 
busy with the brown nets, laying them 
out on the short grass of the shore, mend- 
ing them with netting-needles like small 
shuttles, carrying huge burdens of them 
on their shoulders in the hot sunlight ; 
others were mending, caulking, or tarring 
their boats, and looking to their various 
fittings. All was preparation for the new 
venture in their own waters, and every- 
thing went merrily and hopefully. Wives 
who had not accompanied their husbands 
now had them home again, and their 
anxieties would henceforth endure but 
for a night — joy would come with the 
red sails in the morning; lovers were 
once more together, the one great dread 
broken into a hundred little questioning 
fears ; mothers had their sons again, to 
watch with loving eyes as they swung 
their slow limbs at their labor, or in the 
evenings sauntered about, hands in pock- 
ets, pipe in mouth, and blue bonnet cast 
carelessly on the head; it was almost a 
single family, bound together by a net- 
work of .intermarriages, so intricate as 
to render it impossible for any one who 
did not belong to the community to fol- 
low the threads or read the design of the 
social tracery. 

And while the Seaton swarmed with 


“the goings on of life,” the town of Port- 
lossie lay above it still as a country ham- 
let, with more odors than people about ; 
of people it was seldom indeed that three 
were to be spied at once in the wide 
street, while of odors you would always 
encounter a smell of leather from the 
saddler’s shop, and a mingled message 
of bacon and cheese from the very gen- 
eral dealer’s — in whose window hung 
what seemed three hams, and only he 
who looked twice would discover that 
the middle object was no ham, but a 
violin — while at every corner lurked a 
scent of gillyflowers and southernwood. 
Idly supreme, Portlossie the upper look- 
ed down in condescension — that is, in 
half-concealed contempt — on the ant- 
heap below it. 

The evening arrived on which the 
greater part of the boats was to put off 
for the first essay. Malcolm would have 
made one in the little fleet, for he be- 
longed to his friend Joseph Mair’s crew, 
had it not been found impossible to get 
the new boat ready before the following 
evening ; whence, for this one more, he 
was” still his own master, with one more 
chance of a pleasure for which he had 
been on the watch ever since Lady Flo- 
rimel had spoken of having a row in his 
boat. True, it was not often she appear- 
ed on the shore in the evening ; never- 
theless he kept watching the dune with 
his keen eyes, for he had hinted to Mrs. 
Courthope that perhaps her young lady 
would like to see the boats go out. 

Although it was the fiftieth time his 
eyes had swept the links in vague hope, 
he could yet hardly believe their testi- 
mony when now at length he spied a 
form, which could only be hers, looking 
seaward from the slope, as still as a 
sphinx on Egyptian sands. 

He sauntered slowly toward her, by 
the landward side of the dune, gathering 
on his way a handful of the reddest 

91 


92 


MALCOLM. 


daisies he could find; then, ascending 
the sand-hill, approached her along the 
top. 

“ Saw ye ever sic gowans in yer life, 
iny leddy ?” he said, holding out his posy. 

“ Is that what you call them ?” she re- 
turned. 

“ Ow ay, my leddy — daisies ye ca’ 
them. I dinna ken but yours is the 
bonnier name o’ the twa — gien it be 
what Mr. Graham tells me the auld poet 
Chaucer maks o’ ’t.” 

“What is that?’’ 

“ Ow, jist the een o’ the day — the day's 
eyes, ye ken. They ’re sma’ een for sic 
a great face, but syne there’s a lot o’ 
them to mak up for that. They’ve be- 
gun to close a’ready, but the mair they 
close the bonnier they luik, wi’ their bits 
o’ screwed-up mooies {little 7?iouths). 
But saw ye ever sic reid anes, or ony sic 
a size, my leddy ?’’ 

“ I don’t think I ever did. What is the 
reason they are so large and red ?’’ 

“ I dinna ken. There canna be muckle 
nourishment in sic a thin soil, but there 
maun be something that agrees wi’ them. 
It’s the same a’ roon’ aboot here.’’ 

Lady Florimel sat looking at the dai- 
sies, and Malcolm stood a few yards off, 
watching for the first of the red sails, 
which must soon show themselves, creep- 
ing out on the ebb tide. Nor had he 
waited long before a boat appeared, then 
another and another — six huge oars, 
ponderous to toil withal, urging each 
from the shelter of the harbor out into 
the wide weltering plain. The fishing- 
boat of that time was not decked as now, 
and each, with every lift of its bows, re- 
vealed to their eyes a gaping hollow, 
ready, if a towering billow should break 
above it, to be filled with sudden death. 
One by one the whole fleet crept out, and 
ever as they gained the breeze, up went 
the red sails, and filled : aside leaned 
every boat from the wind, and went dan- 
cing away over the frolicking billows 
toward the sunset, its sails, deep-dyed in 
oak-bark, shining redder and redder in 
the growing redness of the sinking sun. 
Nor did Portlossie alone send out her 
boats, like huge sea-birds warring on the 
live treasures of the deep ; from beyond 


the headlands east and west, out they 
glided on slow red wing — from Scaur- 
nose, from Sandend, from Clamrock, 
from the villages all along the coast — 
spreading as they came, each to its work 
apart through all the laborious night, to 
rejoin its fellows only as home drew them 
back in the clear gray morning, laden 
and slow with the harvest of the stars. 
But the night lay between, into which 
they were sailing over waters of heaving 
green that for ever kept tossing up roses — 
a night whose curtain was a horizon built 
up of steady blue, but gorgeous with pass- 
ing purple and crimson, and flashing 
with molten gold. 

Malcolm was not one of those to whom 
the sea is but a pond for fish, and the 
sky a storehouse of wind and rain, sun- 
shine and snow : he stood for a moment 
gazing, lost in pleasure. Then he turned 
to Lady Florimel : she had thrown her 
daisies on the sand, appeared to be deep 
in her book, and certainly caught noth- 
ing of the splendor before her, beyond 
the red light on her page. 

“Saw ye ever a bonnier sicht, my 
leddy ?’’ said Malcolm. 

She looked up, and saw and gazed in 
silence. Her nature was full of poetic 
possibilities; and now a formless thought 
foreshadowed itself in a feeling she did 
not understand : why should such a sight 
as this make her feel sad? The vital 
connection between joy and effort had 
begun from afar to reveal itself with the 
question she now uttered. 

“ What is it all for ?’’ she asked dream- 
ily, her eyes gazing out on the calm ec- 
stasy of color, which seemed to have 
broken the bonds of law, and ushered in 
a new chaos, fit matrix of new heavens 
and new earth. 

“To catch herrin’,’’ answered Malcolm, 
ignorant of the mood that prompted the 
question, and hence mistaking its pur- 
port. 

But a falling doubt had troubled the 
waters of her soul, and through the ripple 
she could descry it settling into form. 
She was silent for a moment. 

“I want to know,’’ she resumed, “why 
it looks as if some great thing were going 
on. Why is all this pomp and show? 


MALCOLM, 


Something ought to be at hand. All I 
see is the catching of a few miserable 
fish ! If it were the eve of a glorious 
battle now, I could understand it — if 
those were the little English boats rush- 
ing to attack the Spanish Armada, for 
instance. But they are only gone to 
catch fish ! Or if they were setting out 
‘to discover the Isles of the West, the 
country beyond the sunset! — but this 
jars.” 

” I canna answer ye a’ at ance, my 
leddy,” said Malcolm : “ I maun taktime 
to think aboot it. But I ken brawly what 
ye mean.” 

Even as he spoke he withdrew, and 
descending the mound, walked away be- 
yond the bored craig, regardless now of 
the far-lessening sails and the sinking 
sun. The motes of the twilight were 
multiplying fast as he returned along the 
shore-side of the dune, but Lady Florimel 
had vanished from its crest. He ran to 
the top : thence, in the dim of the twi- 
light, he saw her slow-retreating form, 
phantom-like, almost at the grated door 
of the tunnel, which, like that of a tomb, 
appeared ready to draw her in, and yield 
her no more. 

“My leddy! my leddy!” he cried, 
“ winna ye bide for ’t ?” 

He went bounding after her like a deer. 
She heard him call, and stood holding 
the door half open. 

“ It ’s the battle o’ Armageddon, my 
leddy,” he cried, as he calne within hear- 
ing distance. 

“The battle of what?” she exclaimed, 
bewildered. “ I really can’t understand 
your savage Scotch.” 

“ Hoot, my leddy ! the battle o’ Ar- 
mageddon’s no ane o’ the Scots battles ; 
it’s the battle at ween the richt an’ the 
wrang, ’at ye read aboot i’ the buik o* 
the Revelations.” 

“What on earth are you talking about ?” 
returned Lady Florknel in dismay, be- 
ginning to fear that her squire was losing 
his senses. 

“ It’s jist what ye was sayin’, my leddy : 
sic a pomp as yon bude to hing abune a 
gran’ battle some gait or ither.” 

“What has the catching of fish to 
do with a battle in the Revelations?” 


93 

said the girl, moving a little within the 
door. 

“Weel, my leddy, gien I took in han’ 
to set it furth to ye, I would hae to tell 
ye a’ that Mr. Graham has been learnin’ 
me sin’ ever I can min’. He says ’at 
the whole economy o’ natur is fashiont 
unco like that o’ the kingdom o’ haven : 
it’s jist a gradation o’ services, an’ the 
highest en’ o’ ony animal is to contree- 
bute to the life o’ ane higher than itsel’ ; ^ 
sae that it’s the gran’ preevilege o’ the 
fish we tak to be aten by human bein’s, 
an’ uphaud what’s abune them.” 

“ That’s a poor consolation to the fish,” 
said Lady Florimel. 

“ Hoo ken ye that, my leddy? Ye 
can tell nearhan’ as little aboot the hert 
o’ a herrin’ — sic as it has — as the herrin’ 
can tell aboot yer ain, whilk. I’m think- 
in’, maun be o’ the lairgest size.” 

“ How should you know anything 
about my heart, pray?” she asked, with 
more amusement than offence. 

“Jist by my ain,” answered Malcolm. 

Lady Florimel began to fear she must 
have allowed the fisher-lad more liberty 
than was proper, seeing he dared avow 
that he knew the heart of a lady of her 
position by his own. But indeed Mal- 
colm was wrong, for in the scale of hearts 
Lady Florimel’s was far below his. She 
stepped quite within the door, and was 
on the point of shutting it, but something 
about the youth restrained her, exciting 
at least her curiosity ; his eyes glowed 
with a deep quiet light, and his face, 
even grand at the moment, had a greater 
influence upon her than she knew. In- 
stead therefore of interposing the door 
between them, she only kept it poised, 
ready to fall-to the moment the sanity 
of the youth should become a hair’s- 
breadth more doubtful than she already 
considered it. 

“ It’s a’ pairt o’ ae thing, my leddy,” 
Malcolm resumed. “ The herrin ’s like 
the fowk ’at cairries the mate an’ the 
pooder an’ sic like for them ’at does the 
fechtin.’ The hert o’ the leevin’ man’s 
the place whaur the battle’s foucht, an’ 
it’s aye gaein’ on an’ on there atween God 
an’ Sawtan ; an’ the fish they baud fowk 
up till ’t — ” ^ 


94 


MALCOLM. 


“ Do you mean that the herrings help 
you to fight for God ?” said Lady Flori- 
mel with a superior smile. 

“Aither for God or for the deevil, my 
leddy — ^that depen’s upo’ the fowk them- 
sel’s. I say it bauds them up to fecht, 
an’ the thing maun be fouchten oot. 
Fowk to fecht maun live, an’ the herrin’ 
bauds the life i’ them, an’ sae the catch- 
in’ o’ the herrin’ comes in to be a pairt 
o’ the battle.” 

“Wouldn’t it be more sensible to say 
that the battle is between the fishermen 
and the sea, for the sake of their wives 
and children ?” suggested Lady Florimel 
supremely. 

“Na, my leddy, it wadna be half sae 
sensible, for it wadna justifee the grandur 
that hings ower the fecht. The battle 
wi’ the sea ’s no sae muckle o’ an affair. 
An’, ’deed, gien it warna that the wives 
an’ the verra weans hae themsel’s to fecht 
i’ the same battle o’ guid an’ ill, I dinna 
see the muckle differ there wad be atween 
them an’ the fish, nor what for they sudna 
ate ane anither as the craturs i’ the wat- 
ter du. But gien ’t be the battle, I say, 
there can be no pomp o’ sea or sky ower 
gran’ for ’t ; an’ it’s a’ weel waured [ex- 
pended) gien it but baud the gude anes 
merry an’ strong, an’ up to their wark. 
For that, weel may the sun shine a celes- 
tial rosy reid, an’ weel may the boatie 
row, an’ weel may the stars luik doon, 
blinkin’ an’ luikin’ again — ilk ane duin’ 
its bonny pairt to mak a man a richt- 
hcrtit, guid-willed sodger !” 

“And, pray, what may be your rank 
in this wonderful army ?” asked Lady 
Florimel, with the air and tone of one 
humoring a lunatic. 

“I’m naething but a raw recruit, my 
leddy ; but gien I hed my chice, I wad 
be piper to my reg’ment.” 

“ How do you mean ?” 

“I wad mak sangs. Dinna lauch at 
me, my leddy, for they’re the best kin’ 
o’ weapon for the wark ’at I ken. But 
I’m no a makar [poet), an’ maun con- 
tent mysel’ wi’ duin’ my wark as I fin’ 
it.” 

“Then why,” said Lady Floiimel, with 
the conscious right of social superiority 
to administer good counsel — “why don’t 


you work harder, and get a better house, 
and wear better clothes ?” 

Malcolm’s mind was so full of far 
other and weightier things that the ques- 
tion bewildered him ; but he grappled 
with the reference to his clothes. 

“’Deed, my leddy,” he returned, “ye 
may weel say that, seein’ ye was never 
aboord a herrin’-boat ! but gien ye ance 
saw the inside o’ ane fu’ o’ fish, whaur a 
body gangs slidderin’ aboot, maybe up 
to the middle o’ ’s leg in wamlin’ herrin’, 
an’ the neist meenute, maybe, weet to 
the skin wi’ the splash o’ a muckle jaw 
[wave), ye micht think the claes guid 
eneuch for the wark — though ill fit, I 
confess wi’ shame, to come afore yer 
leddyship.” 

“ I thought you only fished about close 
by the shore in a little boat ; I didn’t 
know you went with the rest of the fish- 
ermen : that’s very dangerous work — 
isn’t it ?” 

“No ower dangerous, my leddy. 
There’s some gangs doon ilka sizzon ; 
but it’s a’ i’ the w’y o’ your wark.” 

“ Then how is it you’re not gone fish- 
ing to-night ?” 

“ She ’s a new boat, an’ there’s anither 
day’s wark on her afore we win oot. — 
Wadna ye like a row the nicht, my 
leddy ?” 

“ No, certainly ; it’s much too late.” 

“ It ’ll be nane mirker nor ’tis ; but I 
reckon ye’re richt. I cam ower by jist 
to see whether ye wadna like to gang 
wi’ the boats a bit ; but yer leddyship 
set me aff thinkin’, an’ that pat it oot o’ 
my heid.” 

“ It’s too late now, anyhow. Come to- 
morrow evening, and I’ll see if I can’t 
go with you.” 

“I canna, my leddy — that’s the fash 
o’ ’t ! I maun gang wi’ Blue Peter the 
morn’s nicht. It was my last chance, 
I’m sorry to say.” 

“ It’s not of the slightest consequence,” 
Lady Florimel returned; and, bidding 
him good-night, she shut and locked the 
door. 

The same instant she vanished, for the 
tunnel was -now quite dark. Malcolm 
turned with a sigh, and took his way 
slowly homeward along the top of the 


MALCOLM. 


dune. All was dim about him — dim in 
the heavens, where a thin veil of gray- 
had gathered over the blue ; dim on the 
ocean, where the stars swayed and swung, 
in faint flashes of dissolving radiance, 
cast loose like ribbons of seaweed ; dim 
all along the shore, where the white of 
the breaking wavelet melted into the 
yellow sand ; and dim in his own heart, 
where the manner and words of the lady 
had half hidden her starry reflex with a 
chilling mist. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE FEAST. 

To the entertainment which the mar- 
quis and Lady Florimel had resolved to 
give, all classes and conditions in the 
neighborhood now began to receive in- 
vitations — shopkeepers, there called mer- 
chants, and all socially above them, in- 
dividually, by notes, in the name of the 
marquis and Lady Florimel, but in the 
handwriting of Mrs. Crathie and her 
daughters ; and the rest generally, by 
the sound of bagpipes and proclamation 
from the lips of Duncan MacPhail. To 
the satisfaction of Johnny Bykes, the ex- 
clusion of improper persons was left in 
the hands of the gatekeepers. 

The thing had originated with the fac- 
tor. The old popularity of the lords of 
the land had vanished utterly during the 
life of the marquis’s brother, and Mr. 
Crathie, being wise in his generation, 
sought to initiate a revival of it by hint- 
ing the propriety of some general hos- 
pitality, a suggestion which the marquis 
was anything but loath to follow. For 
the present Lord Lossie, although as un- 
ready as most men to part with anything 
he cared for, could yet cast away mag- 
nificently, and had always greatly prized 
a reputation’ for liberality. 

For the sake of the fishermen, the first 
Saturday after the commencement of the 
home-fishing was appointed. The few 
serious ones, mostly Methodists, objected 
on the ground of the proximity of the 
Sunday; but their attitude was, if pos- 
sible, of still less consequence in the 
eyes of their neighbors that it was well 


95 

known they would in no case have ac- 
cepted such an invitation. 

The day dawned propitious. As early 
as five o’clock, Mr. Crathie was abroad, 
booted and spurred — now directing the 
workmen who were setting up tents and 
tables ; now conferring with house-stew- 
ard, butler or cook ; now mounting his 
horse and galloping off to the home- 
farm or the distillery, or into the town to 
the Lossie Arms, where certain guests 
from a distance were to be accommo- 
dated, and whose landlady had under- 
taken the superintendence of certain 
of the victualing departments ; for canny 
Mr. Crathie would not willingly have the 
meanest guest ask twice for anything he 
wanted — so invaluable did he consider 
a good word from the humblest quarter — 
and the best labors of the French cook, 
even had he reverenced instead of de- 
spising Scottish dishes, would have ill- 
sufficed for the satisfaction of appetites 
critically appreciative of hotch-potch, 
sheep’s head, haggis and black puddings. 

The neighboring nobility and landed 
gentlemen, the professional guests also, 
including the clergy, were to eat with the 
marquis in the great hall. On the grass 
near the house tents were erected for the 
burgesses of the burgh and the tenants of 
the marquis’s farms. I would have said 
on the lawn, but there was no lawn 
proper about the place, the ground was 
so picturesquely broken — in parts with 
all but precipices — and so crowded with 
trees. Hence its aspect was specially 
unlike that of an English park and 
grounds. The whole was Celtic as dis- 
tinguished in character from Saxon. For 
the lake-like lawn, for the wide sweeps 
of airy room in which expand the mighty 
boughs of solitary trees, for the filmy 
gray-blue distances, and the far-off seg- 
ments of horizon, here were the tree- 
crowded grass, the close windings of the 
long glen of the burn, heavily overshad- 
owed, and full of mystery and cover, but 
leading at last to the widest vantage of 
outlook — the wild heathery hill down 
which it drew its sharp furrow ; while, in 
front of the house, beyond hidden river, 
and plane of tree-tops, and far-sunk shore 
with its dune and its bored crag and its 


96 


MALCOLM. 


tortuous caves, lay the great sea, a pout- 
ing under lip, met by the thin, repose- 
ful — shall I say sorrowful ? — upper lip of 
the sky. 

A bridge of stately span, level with the 
sweep in front, honorable embodiment 
of the savings of a certain notable count- 
ess, one end resting on the same rock 
with the house, their foundations almost 
in contact, led across the burn to more 
and more trees, their roots swathed in 
the finest grass, through which ran broad 
carriage drives and narrower footw'ays, 
hard and smooth with yellow gravel. 
Here amongst the trees were set long 
tables for the fishermen, mechanics and 
farm-laborers. Here also was the place 
appointed for the piper. 

As the hour drew near, the guests came 
trooping in at every entrance. By the 
sea-gate came the fisher-folk, many of 
the men in the blue jersey, the women 
mostly in short print gowns of large pat- 
terns — the married with huge, wide-frilled 
caps, and the unmarried with their hair 
gathered in silken nets : bonnets there 
were very few. Each group that entered 
had a joke or a jibe for Johnny Bykes, 
which he met in varying but always surly 
fashion — in that of utter silence in the case 
of Duncan and Malcolm, at which the 
former was indignant, the latter merry. 
By the town-gate came the people of 
Portlossie. By the new main entrance 
from the high road beyond the town, 
through lofty Greekish gates, came the 
lords and lairds, in yellow coaches, gigs 
and post-chaises. By another gate, far 
up the glen, came most of the country- 
folk, some walking, some riding, some 
driving, all merry and with the best in- 
tentions of enjoying themselves. As the 
common people approached the house, 
they were directed to their different tables 
by the sexton, for he knew everybody. 

The marquis was early on the ground, 
going about amongst his guests, and show- 
ing a friendly off-hand courtesy which 
prejudiced every one in his favor. Lady 
Florimel soon joined him, and a certain 
frank way she inherited from her father, 
joined to the great beauty her mother had 
given her, straightway won all hearts. 
She spoke to Duncan with cordiality ; the 


moment he heard her voice, he pulled 
off his bonnet, put it under his arm, and 
responded with what I can find no better 
phrase to describe than — a profuse dig- 
nity. Malcolm she favored with a smile 
which swelled his heart with pride and 
devotion. The bold-faced countess next 
appeared : she took the marquis’s other 
arm, and nodded to his guests conde- 
scendingly and often, but seemed, after 
every nod, to throw her head farther back 
than before. Then to haunt the goings 
of Lady Florimel came Lord Meikleham, 
receiving little encouragement, but eager 
after such crumbs as he could gather. 
Suddenly the great bell under the highest 
of the gilded vanes rang a loud peal, and 
the marquis having led his chief guests 
to the hall, as soon as he was seated the 
tables began to be served simultaneously. 

At that where Malcolm sat with Dun- 
can grace was grievously foiled by the 
latter, for, unaware of what was going 
on, he burst out, at the request of a wag- 
gish neighbor, with a tremendous blast, 
of which the company took advantage to 
commence operations at once, and pres- 
ently the clatter of knives and forks and 
spoons was the sole sound to be heard 
in that division of the feast : across the 
valley, from the neighborhood of the 
house, came now and then a faint peal 
of laughter, for there they knew how to 
be merry while they ate ; but here, the 
human element was in abeyance, for 
people who work hard seldom talk while 
they eat. From the end of an overhang- 
ing bough a squirrel looked at them for 
one brief moment, wondering perhaps 
that they should not prefer cracking a 
nut in private, and vanished ; but the 
birds kept singing, and the scents of the 
flowers came floating up from the garden 
below, and the burn went on with its own 
noises and its own silences, drifting the 
froth of its last passion down toward the 
doors of the world. 

In the hall, ancient jokes soon began 
to flutter their moulted wings, and musty 
compliments to offer themselves for the 
acceptance of the ladies, and meet with 
a reception varied by temperament and 
experience : what the bold-faced count- 
ess heard with a hybrid contortion, half 


MALCOLM, 


97 


sneer and half smile, would have made 
Lady Florimel stare out of big refusing 
eyes. 

Those more immediately around the 
marquis were soon laughing over the 
story of the trick he had played the blind 
piper, and of the apology he had had 
to make in consequence ; and perhaps 
something better than mere curiosity 
had to do with the wish of several of the 
guests to see the old man and his grand- 
son. The marquis said the piper him- 
self would take care they should not 
miss him, but he would send for the 
young fellow, who was equally fitted to 
amuse them, being quite as much of a 
character in his way as the other. 

He spoke to the man behind his chair, 
and in a few minutes Malcolm made his 
appearance, following the messenger. 

“Malcolm,” said the marquis kindly, 
“ I want you to keep your eyes open, and 
see that no mischief is done about the 
place.” 

“ I dinna .think there’s ane o’ oor ain 
fowk wad dee ony mischeef, my lord,” 
answered Malcolm ; “but whan ye keep 
open yett, ye canna be sure wha wins in, 
’specially wi’ sic a gowk as Johnny Bykes 
at ane o’ them. No ’at he wad wrang 
yer lordship a hair, my lord !” 

“At all events you’ll be on the alert,” 
said the marquis. 

“ I wull that, my lord. There’s twa or 
three aboot a’ready ’at I dinna a’thegither 
like the leuks o’. They’re no like coun- 
try-fowk, an’ they’re no fisher-fowk. It’s 
no far aff the time o’ year whan the 
gypsies are i’ the w’y o’ payin’ ’s a veesit, 
an’ they may ha’ come in at the Binn 
yett [gate), whaur there’s nane but an 
auld wife to baud them oot.” 

“Well, well,” said the marquis, who 
had no fear about the behavior of his 
guests, and had only wanted a color for 
his request of Malcolm’s presence. “ In 
the mean time,” he added, “we are rather 
short-handed here. Just give the butler 
a little assistance — will you ?” 

“Willin’ly my lord,” answered Mal- 
colm, forgetting altogether, in the pros- 
pect of being useful and within sight of 
Lady Florimel, that he had but half- 
finished his own dinner. The butler, 
7 


who had already had an opportunity of 
admiring his aptitude, was glad enough 
to have his help, and after this day used 
to declare that in a single week he could 
make him a better servant than any of 
the men who waited at table. It was 
indeed remarkable how, with such a 
limited acquaintance with the many 
modes of an artificial life, he was yet, 
by quickness of sympathetic insight, ca- 
pable not only of divining its require- 
ments, but of distinguishing, amid the 
multitude of appliances around, those 
fitted to their individual satisfaction. 

It was desirable, however, that the sit- 
ting in the hall should not be prolonged, 
and after a few glasses of wine the mar- 
quis rose and went to make the round 
of the other tables. Taking them in 
order, he came last to those of the rustics, 
mechanics and fisher-folk. These had 
advanced considerably in their potations, 
and the fun was loud. His appearance 
was greeted with shouts, into which Dun- 
can struck with a paean from his pipes ; 
but in the midst of the tumult, one of 
the oldest of the fisherman stood up, and 
in a voice accustomed to battle with windy 
uproars, called for silence. He then ad- 
dressed their host. 

“Ye’ll jist mak ’s prood by drinkin’ a 
tum’ler wi ’s, yer lordship,” he said. “ It’s 
no ilka day we hae the honor o’ yer lord- 
ship’s company.” 

“ Or I of yours,” returned the marquis 
with hearty courtesy. “ I will do it with 
pleasure — or at least a glass : my head’s 
not so well seasoned as some of yours.” 

“Gien yer lordship’s hed hed as mony 
blasts o’ nicht win’, an’ as mony jaups 
o’ cauld sea-watter aboot its lugs as oors, 
it wad hae been fit to stan’ as muckle o’ 
the barley bree as the stievest o’ the lot, 
I s’ warran’.” 

“I hope so,” returned Lord Lossie, 
who, having taken a seat at the end of 
the table, was now mixing a tumbler of 
toddy. As soon as he had filled his 
glass, he rose and drank to the fisher- 
men of Portlossie, their wives and their 
sweethearts, wishing them a mighty con- 
quest of herring, and plenty of children 
to keep up the breed and the war on the 
fish. His speech was received with hearty 


98 


MALCOLM. 


cheers, during which he sauntered away 
to rejoin his friends. 

Many toasts followed, one of which, 

“ Damnation to the dog-fish !” gave op- 
portunity to a wag, seated near the piper, 
to play upon the old man’s well-known 
foible by adding, “ an’ Cawmill o’ Glen- 
lyon whereupon Duncan, who had by 
this time taken more whisky than was 
good for him, rose, and made a rambling 
speech, in which he returned thanks for 
the imprecation, adding thereto the hope 
that never might one of the brood ac- 
cursed go down with honor to the grave. 

The fishermen listened with respectful 
silence, indulging only in nods, winks 
and smiles for the interchange of amuse- 
ment, until the utterance of the wish re- 
corded, when, apparently carried away 
for a moment by his eloquence, they 
broke into loud applause. But from the 
midst of it, a low, gurgling laugh close 
thy him reached Duncan’s ear : excited 
sthough he was with strong drink and 
.approbation, he shivered, sunk into his 
• seat, .and clutched at his pipes convul- 
sively, .as if they had been a weapon of 
(defence. 

“Malcolm! Malcolm, my son!’’ he 
.muttered.feebly, “tere is a voman will pe 
laughing! .She is .a paad voman; she 
.makes me. cold T’ 

iFinding from the no - response that 
Malcolm had left his side, he sat motion- 
less, drawn into himself, and struggling 
to suppress the ourdliing shiver. Some 
of the women gathered about him, but 
he assured them it .was nothing more 
'than a passing sickness, 

Malcolm’s attentionhad,;a few minutes 
'before, been drawn to two men of some- 
what peculiar appearance, who, applaud- 
ing louder than any, only pretended to 
drink, and occasionally .inteKclianged 
glances of intelligence. It was one of 
these peculiar looks that first attracted 
his notice. He soon discovered that they 
had a comrade. on the other side of die 
table, who apparently, like themselves, 
had little or no acquaintance with any 
one .near him. 'He .did mot like either 
their countenances or their behavior, and 
resolved to watch them. In order there- 
fore to be able to follow them when . they . 


moved, as he felt certain they would be- 
fore long, without attracting their atten- 
tion he left the table and making a cir- 
cuit took up his position behind a neigh- 
boring tree. Hence it came that he was 
not, at the moment of his need, by his 
grandfather’s side, whither he had re- 
turned as soon as dinner was over in the 
hall. 

Meantime it became necessary to check 
the drinking by the counter-attraction of 
the dance : Mr. Crathie gave orders that 
a chair should be mounted on a table for 
Duncan, and the young hinds and fisher- 
men were soon dancing zealously with 
the girls of their company to his strath- 
speys and reels. The other divisions of 
the marquis’s guests made merry to the 
sound of a small brass band, a harp and 
two violins. 

When the rest forsook the toddy for the 
reel, the objects of Malcolm’s suspicion 
remained at the table, not to drink, but 
to draw nearer to each other and confer. 
At length, when the dancers began to 
return in quest of liquor, they rose and 
went away loiteringly through the trees. 
As the twilight was now deepening, Mal- 
colm found it difficult to keep them in 
sight, but for the same reason he was 
able the more quickly to glide after them 
from tree to tree. It was almost moon- 
rise, he said to himself, and if they med- 
itated mischief, now was their best time. 

Presently he heard the sound of run- 
ning feet, and in a moment more spied 
the unmistakable form of the mad laird 
darting through the thickening dusk of 
the trees with gestures of wild horror. 
As he passed the spot where Malcolm 
stood, he cried out in a voice like a sup- 
pressed shriek, “ It’s my mither ! It’s my 
mither ! I dinna ken whaur I come frae.’’ 

His sudden appearance and outcry so 
startled Malcolm that for a moment he 
forgot his watch, and when he looked 
again the men had vanished. Not hav- 
ing any clue to their intent, and knowing 
only that on such a night the house was 
nearly defenceless, he turned at once and 
made for it. As he approached the front, 
coming over the bridge, he fancied he 
saw a figure disappear through the en- 
ilrance, and quickened his pace. Just as 


MALCOLM. 


he reached it, he heard a door bang, and 
supposing it to be that which shut off the 
second hall, whence rose the principal 
staircase, he followed this vaguest of 
hints, and bounded to the top of the stair. 
Entering the first passage he came to, he 
found it almost dark, with a half-open 
door at the end, through which shone a 
gleam from some window beyond : this 
light was plainly shut off for a moment, 
as if by some one passing the window. 
He hurried after — noiselessly, for the 
floor was thickly carpeted — and came to 
the foot of a winding stone stair. Afraid 
beyond all things of doing nothing, and 
driven by the formless conviction that 
if he stopped to deliberate he certainly 
should do nothing, he shot up the dark 
screw like an ascending bubble, passed 
the landing of the second floor without 
observing it, and arrived in the attic re- 
gions of the ancient pile, under low, ir- 
regular ceilings, here ascending in cones, 
there coming down in abrupt triangles, 
or sloping away to a hidden meeting with 
the floor in distant corners. His only 
light was the cold blue glimmer from 
here and there a storm-window or a sky- 
light. As the conviction of failure grew 
on him, the ghostly feeling of the place 
began to invade him. All was vague, 
forsaken and hopeless as a dreary dream, 
with the superadded miserable sense of 
lonely sleep-walking. I suspect that the 
feeling we call ghostly is but the sense 
of abandonment in the lack of compan- 
ion life ; but be this as it may, Malcolm 
was glad enough to catch sight of a gleam 
as from a candle at the end of a long, 
low passage on which he had come after 
mazy wandering. Another similar pas- 
sage crossed its end, somewhere in which 
must be the source of the light : he crept 
toward it, and, laying himself flat on the 
floor, peeped round the corner. His very 
heart stopped to listen : seven or eight 
yards from him, with a small lantern in 
her hand, stood a short female figure, 
which, the light falling for a moment on 
her soft evil countenance, he recognized 
as Mrs. Catanach’s. Beside her stood a 
tall graceful figure, draped in black from 
head to foot. Mrs. Catanach was speak- 
ing in a low tone, and what Malcolm 


99 

was able to catch was evidently the close 
of a conversation. 

“ I’ll do my best, ye may be sure, my 
leddy,” she said. “There’s something no 
canny aboot the cratur, an’ doobtless ye 
was an ill-used wuman, an’ ye’re i’ the 
richt. But it’s a some fearsome ventur, 
an’ may be luikit intill, ye ken. There 
I s’ be yer scoug. Lippen to me, an’ ye 
s’ no repent it.’’ 

As she ended speaking, she turned to 
the door, and drew from it a key, evi- 
dently after a foiled attempt to unlock it 
therewith ; for from a bunch she carried 
she now made choice of another, and 
was already fumbling with it in the key- 
hole, when Malcolm bethought himself 
that, whatever her further intent, he 
ought not to allow her to succeed in 
opening the door. He therefore rose 
slowly to his feet, and stepping softly out 
into the passage, sent his round blue 
bonnet spinning with such a certain aim 
that it flew right against her head. She 
gave a cry of terror,^ smothered by the 
sense of evil secresy, and dropped her 
lantern. It went out. Malcolm pattered 
with his hands on the floor, and began 
to howl frightfully. Her companion had 
already fled, and Mrs. Catanach picked 
up her lantern and followed.. But her 
flight was soft-footed, and gave sign only 
in the sound of her garments and a clank 
or two of her keys. 

Gifted with a good sense of relative 
position, Malcolm was able to find his 
way back to the hall without much dif- 
ficulty, and met no one on the way. 
When he stepped into the open air a 
round moon was visible through the trees, 
and their shadows were lying across the 
sward. The merriment had grown loud- 
er, for a good deal of whisky having 
been drunk by men of all classes, hilar- 
ity had ousted restraint, and the separa- 
tion of classes having broken a little, 
there were many stragglers from the 
higher to the lower divisions, whence the 
area of the more boisterous fun had con- 
siderably widened. Most of the ladies 
and gentlemen were dancing in the cheq- 
uer of the trees and moonlight, but, a 
little removed from the rest. Lady Flori- 
mel was seated under a tree, with Lord 


lOO 


MALCOLM. 


Meikleham by her side, probably her 
partner in the last dance. She was look- 
ing at the moon, which shone upon her 
from between two low branches, and 
there was a sparkle in her eyes and a 
luminousness upon her cheek which to 
Malcolm did not seem to come from the 
moon only. He passed on, with the 
hrst pang of jealousy in his heart, feel- 
ing now for the first time that the space 
between Lady Florimel and himself was 
indeed a gulf. But he cast the whole 
thing from him for the time with an in- 
ward scorn of his foolishness, and hur- 
ried on from group to group to find the 
marquis. 

Meeting with no trace of him, and 
thinking he might be in the flower- gar- 
den, which a few rays of the moon now 
reached, he descended thither. But he 
searched it through with no better suc- 
cess, and at the farthest end was on the 
point of turning to leave it and look else- 
where, when he heard a moan of stifled 
agony on the other side of a high wall 
which here bounded the garden. Climb- 
ing up an espalier, he soon reached the 
top, and looking down on the other side, 
to his horror and rage espied the mad 
laird on the ground, and the very men 
of whom he had been in pursuit stand- 
ing over him and brutally tormenting 
him, apparently in order to make him 
get up and go along with them. One 
was kicking him, another pulling his 
head this way and that by the hair, and 
the third punching and poking his hump, 
which last cruelty had probably drawn 
from him the cry Malcolm had heard. 

Three might be too many for him : he 
descended swiftly, found some stones, 
and a stake from a bed of sweet-peas, 
then climbing up again, took such effect- 
ual aim at one of the villains that he fell 
without uttering a sound. Dropping at 
once from the wall, he rushed at the two 
with stick upheaved. 

“Dinna be in sic a rage, man,” cried 
the first, avoiding his blow : ” we’re aboot 
naething ayont the lawfu’. It’s only the 
mad laird. We’re takin’ ’im to the asy- 
lum at Ebberdeen. By the order o’ ’s 
ain mither !” 


At the word a choking scream came 
from the prostrate victim. Malcolm ut- 
tered a huge imprecation, and struck at 
the fellow again, who now met him in a 
way that showed it was noise more than 
wounds he had dreaded. Instantly the 
other came up, and also fell upon him 
with vigor. But his stick was too much 
for them, and at length one of them, 
crying out, ‘‘It’s the blin’ piper’s bas- 
tard — I’ll mark him yet!” took to his 
heels, and was followed by his com- 
panion. 

More eager after rescue than punish- 
ment, Malcolm turned to the help of the 
laird, whom he found in utmost need of 
his ministrations — gagged, and with his 
hands tied mercilessly tight behind his 
back. His knife quickly released him, 
but the poor fellow was scarcely less 
helpless than before. He clung to Mal- 
colm and moaned piteously, every mo- 
ment glancing over his shoulder in ter- 
ror of pursuit. His mouth hung open as 
if the gag were still tormenting him ; now 
and then he would begin his usual la- 
ment and manage to say ‘‘ I dinna ken 
but when he attempted the whaur, his 
jaw fell and hung as before. Malcolm 
sought to lead him away, but he held 
back, moaning dreadfully ; then Mal- 
colm would have him sit down where 
they were, but he caught his hand and 
pulled him away, stopping instantly, how- 
ever, as if not knowing whither to turn 
from the fears on every side. At length 
the prostrate enemy began to move, when 
the laird, who had been unaware of his 
presence, gave a shriek and took to his 
heels. Anxious not to lose sight of him, 
Malcolm left the wounded man to take 
care of himself, and followed him up the 
steep side of the little valley. 

They had not gone many steps from 
the top of the ascent, however, before the 
fugitive threw himself on the ground ex- 
hausted, and it was all Malcolm could do 
to get him to the town, where, unable to 
go a pace farther, he sank down on Mrs 
Catanach’s doorstep. A light was burn- 
ing in the cottage, but Malcolm would 
seek shelter for him anywhere rather 
than with her, and, in terror of her quick 


MALCOLM, 


loi 


ears, caught him up in his arms like a 
child, and hurried away with him to Miss 
Horn’s. 

“Eh, sirs !’’ exclaimed Miss Horn, when 
she opened the door — for Jean was among 
the merry-makers — wha ’s this ’at ’s kilt 
noo ?’’ 

“ It ’s the — laird — Mr. Stewart,’’ return- 
ed Malcolm. “ He ’s no freely kilt, but 
nigh han’.’’ 

“ Na ! weel I wat ! Come in an’ set 
him doon till we see,’’ said Miss Horn, 
turning and leading the way up to her 
little parlor. 

There Malcolm laid his burden on the 
sofa and gave a brief account of the res- 
cue. 

“Lord preserve ’s, Ma’colm!’’ cried 
Miss Horn, as soon as he had ended his 
tale, to which she had listened in silence 
with fierce eyes and threatening nose : 
“isna ’t a mercy I wasna made like some 
fowk, or I couldna ha’ bidden to see the 
puir fallow misguidet that gait ! It ’s a 
special mercy, Ma’colm MacPhail, to be 
made wantin’ ony sic thing as feelin’s.’’ 

She was leaving the room as she spoke 
— to return instantly with brandy. The 
laird swallowed some with an effort, and 
began to revive. 

“Eh, sirs!’’ exclaimed Miss Horn, re- 
garding him now more narrowly — ^“but 
he’s in an awfu’ state o’ dirt 1 I maun 
wash his face an’ ban’s, an’ pit him till ’s 
bed. Could helpaff wi’ ’s claes, Ma'- 
colm ? Though 1 haena ony feelin’s, I 
’m jist some eerie-like at the puir body’s 
back.’’ 

The last words were uttered in what 
she judged a safe aside. As if she had 
been his mother, she washed his face and 
hands and dried them tenderly, the laird 
submitting like a child. He spoke but 
one word — when she took him by the 
hand to lead him to the room where her 
cousin used to sleep. “Father o’ lichts !’’ 
he said, and no more. Malcolm put him 
to bed, where he lay perfectly still, 
whether awake or asleep they could not 
tell. 

He then set out to go back to Lossie 
House, promising to return after he had 
taken his grandfather home and seen 
him also safe in bed. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

THE NIGHT WATCH. 

When Malcolm returned, Jean had re- 
tired for the night, and again it was Miss 
Horn who admitted him and led him to 
her parlor. It was a low-ceiled room, 
with lean spider-legged furniture and 
dingy curtains. Everything in it was 
suggestive of a comfort slowly vanishing. 
An odor of withered rose-leaves pervaded 
the air. A Japanese cabinet stood in one 
corner, and on the mantelpiece a pair of 
Chinese fans with painted figures whose 
faces were embossed in silk, between 
which ticked an old French clock, whose 
supporters were a shepherd and shep- 
herdess in prettily painted china. Long 
faded as was everything in it, the room 
was yet very rich in the eyes of Malcolm, 
whose home was bare even in compari- 
son with that of the poorest of the fisher- 
women : they had a passion for orna- 
menting their chimney-pieces with china 
ornaments, and their dressers with the 
most gorgeous crockery that their money 
could buy — a certain metallic orange be- 
ing the prevailing hue ; while in Dun- 
can’s cottage, where woman had never 
initiated the taste, there was not even a 
china poodle to represent the finished 
development of luxury in the combina- 
tion of the ugly and the useless. 

Miss Horn had made a little fire in the 
old-fashioned grate, whose bars bellied 
out like a sail almost beyond the narrow 
chimney-shelf, and a tea-kettle was sing- 
ing on the hob, while a decanter, a sugar- 
basin, a nutmeg-grater and other needful 
things on a tray suggested negus, beyond 
which Miss Horn never went in the mat- 
ter of stimulants, asserting that, as she 
had no feelings, she never required any- 
thing stronger. She made Malcolm sit 
down at the opposite side of the fire, and 
mixing him a tumbler of her favorite 
drink, began to question him about the 
day, and how things had gone. 

Miss Horn had the just repute of dis- 
cretion, for, gladly hearing all the news, 
she had the rare virtue of not repeating 
things to the prejudice of others without 
soYi\^good reason for so doing : Malcolm 
therefore, seated thus alone with her in 
the dead of the night, and bound to her 


102 


MALCOLM. 


by the bond of a common well-doing, 
had no hesit^ion in unfolding to her all 
his adventures of the evening. She sat 
with her big hands in her lap, making 
no remark, not even an exclamation, 
while he went on with the tale of the 
garret ; but her listening eyes grew — not 
larger — darker and fiercer as he spoke ; 
the space between her nostrils and mouth 
widened visibly ; the muscles knotted on 
the sides of her neck ; and her nose curved 
more and more to the shape of a beak. 

“There’s some deevilry there!” she 
said at length after he had finished, 
breaking a silence of some moments, 
during which she had been staring into 
the fire. “Whaur twa ill women come 
thegither, there maun be the auld man 
himsel’ atween them.” 

“I dinnadoobt it,” returned Malcolm. 
“An’ ane o’ them ’s an ill wuman, sure 
eneuch ; but I ken naething aboot the 
tither — only ’at she maun be a leddy, by 
the w’y the howdy-wife spak till her.’J 

“ The waur token, whan a leddy col- 
logues wi’ a wuman aneth her ain sta- 
tion, an’ ane ’at has keppit {caught in 
passing') mony a secret in her day, an’ 
by her callin’ has had mair opportunity 
— no to say farther — than ither fowk o’ 
duin’ ill things ! An gien ye dinna ken 
her, that’s no rizzon ’at / sudna hae a 
groff guiss at her by the marks ye read 
aff o’ her. I’ll jist hae to tell ye a story 
sic as an auld wife like me seldom tells 
till a yoong man like yersel’.” . 

“Yer ain bridle sail rule my tongue, 
mem,” said Malcolm. 

“ I s’ lippen to yer discretion,” said 
Miss Horn, and straightway began : 
“Some years ago — an’ I s’ warran’ it’s 
weel ower twinty — that same wuman, 
Bawby Cat’nach — wha was nae hame- 
born wuman, nor had been lang aboot 
the toon — cornin’ as she did frae naebody 
kent whaur, ’cep maybe it was the mar- 
kis ’at than was — preshumed to mak up 
to me i’ the w’y o’ frien’ly acquaintance 
— sic as a maiden leddy micht hae wi’ a 
howdy — an’ no ’at she forgot her proap- 
er behavior to ane like mysel’. But I 
cudna hae bidden {endured) the jaud, 
’cep ’at I had rizzons for lattin’ her jaw 
wag. She was cunnin’, the auld vratch 


— no that auld, maybe aboot forty — but 
I was ower mony for her. She had the 
design to win at something she thoucht 
I kent, an’ sae, to enteece me to open 
my pock, she opent hers, an’ tellt me 
story efter story aboot this neebor an’ 
that — a’ o’ them things ’at ouchtna to 
ha’ been true, an’ ’at she ouchtna to ha’ 
loot pass her lips gien they war true, 
seein’ she cam by the knowledge o’ them 
as she said she did. But she gat nae- 
thin’ o’ me — the fat-braint cat I — an’ she 
hates me like the verra mischeef.” 

Miss Horn paused and took a sip of 
her negus. 

“Ae day I came upon her sittin’ by 
the ingle-neuk i’ my ain kitchen, haudin’ 
a close an’ a laich confab wi’ Jean. I 
had Jean than, an’ hoo I hae keepit the 
hizzy, I hardly ken. I think it maun be 
that, haen’ nae feelin’s o’ my ain, I hae 
ower muckle regaird to ither fowk’s, an’ 
sae I never likit to pit her awa’ wi’oot 
doonricht provocation. But dinna ye 
lippen to Jean, Malcolm — na, na ! — At 
that time, my cousin. Miss Grizel Cam- 
mell — my third cousin, she was — had 
come to bide wi’ me — a bonny yoong 
thing as yfe wad see, but in sair ill health ; 
an’ maybe she had her freits {whims), 
an’ maybe no, but she cudna bide to see 
the wuman Cat’nach aboot the place. 
An’ in verra trowth, she was to mysel’ 
like ane o’ thae ill-faured birds — I dinna 
min’ upo’ the name o’ them — ’at hings 
ower an airmy ; for wharever there was 
onybody nae weel or onybody died, there 
was Bawby Cat’nach. I hae hard o’ 
creepin’ things ’at veesits fowk ’at ’s no 
weel — an’ Bawby was, an’ is, ane sic 
like ! Sae I was angert at seein’ her 
colloguin’ wi’ Jean, an’ I cried Jean to 
me to the door o’ the kitchie. But wi’ 
that up jumps Bawby, an’ cornin’ efter 
her, says to me — says she, ‘ Eh, Miss 
Horn I there’s terrible news : Leddy Los- 
sie’s deid 1 — she ’s been three ooks deid I’ 
— ^‘Weel,’ says I, ‘what’s sae terrible 
aboot that?’ For ye ken I never had 
ony feelin’s, an’ I cud see naething sae 
awfu’ aboot a body deein’ i’ the ord’nar’ 
w’y o’ natur like. ‘ We’ll no miss her 
muckle doon here,’ says I, ‘ for I never 
hard o’ her bein’ at the Hoose sin’ ever 


MALCOLM. 


103 


I can min’.’ — But that’s no a’,’ says she; 

‘ only I wad be laith to speyk aboot it i’ 
the transe [passage). Lat me up the stair 
wi’ ye, an’ I’ll tell ye main’ Weel, pairtly 
’at I was ta’en by surprise like, an’ pairt- 
ly ’at I wasna sae auld as I am noo, an’ 
pairtly that I was keerious to hear — ill ’at 
I likit her — what neist the wuman wad 
say, I did as I ouchtna, an’ turned an’ 
gaed up the stair, an’ loot her follow me. 
Whan she cam in, she pat tu the door 
ahint her, an’ turnt to me, an’ said — says 
she : ‘ An’ wha ’s deid forbye, think ye ?’ 
— ‘ I hae hard o’ naebody,’ I answered. 
‘ Wha but the laird o’ Gersefell !’ says 
she. ‘ I’m sorry to hear that, honest 
man !’ says I ; for a’body likit Mr. Stew- 
art. ‘ An’ what think ye o’ ’t ?’ says 
she, wi’ a runklin o’ her broos, an’ a 
shak o’ her heid, an’ a settin’ o' her roon’ 
nieves upo’ the fat hips 0’ her. ‘ Think 
o’ ’t ?’ says I : ‘ what sud I think o’ ’t, 
but that it’s the wull o’ Providence ?’ 
Wi’ that she leuch till she wabblet a’ 
ower like cauld skink, an’ says she — 
‘ Weel, that’s jist what it is no, an’ that 
lat me tell ye. Miss Horn !’ I glowert at 
her, maist frichtit into believin’ she was 
the witch fowk- ca’d her. ‘ Wha’s son ’s 
the hump-backit cratur,’ says she, ‘ ’at 
comes in i’ the gig whiles wi’ the groom- 
lad, think ye ?’ — Wha’s but the puir 
man’s ’at’s deid ?’ says I. ‘ Deil a bit o’ 
’t!’ says she, ‘an’ I beg yer pardon for 
mentionin’ o’ him^ says she. An’ syne 
she screwt up her mou’, an’ com doss 
up till me — for I wadna sit doon mysel’, 
an’ less wad I bid her, an’ was sorry 
eneuch by this time ’at I had broucht 
her up the stair — an’ says she, layin’ her 
han’ upo’ my airm wi’ a clap, as gien 
her an’ me was to be freen’s upo’ sic a 
gran’ foondation o’ dirt as that ! — says 
she, makin’ a laich toot-moot o’ ’t — He’s 
Lord Lossie’s !’ says she, an’ maks a face 
’at micht hae turnt a cat sick — only by 
guid luck I had nae feelin’s. ‘ An’ no 
suner ’s my leddy deid nor her man fol- 
lows her!’ says she. ‘An’ what do ye 
mak o’ that says she. ‘ Ay, what do 
ye mak o’ tx'at ?’ says I till her again. 
‘ Ow ! what ken I ?’ says she, wi’ anither 
ill leuk ; an’ wi’ that she leuch an’ turn- 
ed awa’, but turned back again or she 


wan to the door, an’ says she — Maybe 
ye didna ken ’at she was broucht to bed 
hersel’ aboot a sax ooks ago ?’ — ‘ Puir 
leddy !’ said I, thinkin’ mair o’ her evil 
report nor o’ the pains o’ childbirth. 

‘ Ay,’ says she, wi’ a deevilich kin’ o’ a 
lauch, like in spite o’ hersel’, ‘for the 
bairn’s deid, they tell me — as bonny a 
lad-bairn as ye wad see, jist ooncoamon I 
An’ whaur div ye think she had her 
doon-lying’? Jist at Lossie Hoose I’ 
Wi’ that she was oot at the door wi’ a 
swag o’ her tail, ’an doon the stair to 
Jean again. I was jist at ane mair wi’ 
anger at mysel’ ’an scunner at her, an’ 
was in twa min’s to gang efter her an’ 
turn her oot o’ the hoose, her an’ Jean 
thegither. I could hear her snicherin’ 
till hersel’ as she gaed doon the stair. 
My verra stamack turned at the poozh- 
onous ted. 

“ I canna say what was true or what 
was fause i’ the scandal o’ her tale, nor 
what for she tuik the trouble to cairry ’t 
to me, but it sune cam to be said ’at the 
yoong laird was but half-witted as weeks 
humpit, an’ ’at his mither cudna bide 
him. An’ certain it was ’at the puir wee 
chap cud as little bide his mither. Gien 
she cam near him ohn luikit for, they 
said, he wad gie a great skriech, and rin 
as fest as his wee weyver [spider) legs 
cud wag aneth the wecht o’ ’s humpie — 
an’ whiles her efter him wi’ onything 
she cud lay her han’ upo’, they said — 
but I kenna. Ony gait, the widow her- 
sel’ grew waur and waur i’ the temper, 
an’ I misdoobt me sair was gey hard 
upo’ the puir wee objeck — fell cruel till 
’im, they said — till at len’th, as a’ bod} 
kens, he forhooit [forsook) the hoose 
a’thegither. An’ puttin’ this an’ that 
thegither, for I hear a hantle said ’at I 
say na ower again, it seems to me ’at her 
first scunner at her puir misformt bairn, 
wha they say was humpit whan he was 
born, an’ maist cost her life to get lowst 
o’ him — her scunner at ’im ’s been grow- 
in’ an’ growin’, till it’s grown to doon- 
richt hate.” 

‘‘ It’s an awfu’ thing ’at ye say. mem, 
an’ I doobt it’s ower true. But hoo can 
a mither hate her ain bairn ?” said Mal- 
colm. 


104 


MALCOLM. 


“’Deed it’s no wonner ye sud'speir, 
laddie ! for it’s weel kent ’at maist mith- 
ers, gien there be a shargar or a nat’ral 
or a crookit ane amo’ their bairns, mak 
mair o’ that ane nor o’ a’ the lave putten 
thegither — as gien they wad mak it up 
till ’im, for the fair play o’ the waii’. 
But ye see in this case, he’s aiblins [per- 
haps) the child o’ sin — for a leear may 
tell an ill trowth — an’ beirs the marks o’ 
’t, ye see ; sae to her he’s jist her sin 
rinnin’ aboot the warl’ incarnat ; an’ that 
canna be pleasant to luik upo’.’’ 

“But excep’ she war ashamed o’ ’t, 
she wadna tak it sae muckle to hert to 
be remin’t o’ ’t.’’ 

“Mony ane’s ashamed o’ the conse- 
quences ’at’s no ashamed o’ the deed. 
Mony one cud du the sin ower again, ’at 
canna bide the sicht or even the word o’ 
’t. I hae seen a body ’at wad steal a 
thing as sune’s luik at it gang daft wi’ 
rage at bein’ ca’d a thief. An’ maybe 
she wadna care gien ’t warna for the 
oogliness o’ ’im. Sae be he was a bon- 
ny sin. I’m thinkin’ she wad bide him 
weel eneuch. But seein’ he ’s naither i’ 
the image o’ her ’at bore ’im nor him ’at 
got ’im, but beirs on ’s back, for ever in 
her sicht, the sin ’at was the gettin’ o’ 
’m, he’s a hump to her, an’ her hert ’s 
aye howkin a grave for ’im to lay ’im 
oot o’ sicht intill : she bore ’im, an’ she 
wad beery ’im. An’ I’m thinkin’ she 
beirs the markis — gien sae it be sae — 
deid an’ gane as he is — a grutch yet, for 
passin’ sic an offspring upon her, an’ 
syne no merryin’ her efter an’ a’, an’ the 
ro’d clear o’ baith ’at stude atween them. 
It was said ’at the man ’at killt ’im in a 
twasum fecht [duel), sae mony a year 
efter, was a freen’ o’ hers.’’ 

“ But wad fowk du sic awfu’ ill things, 
mem — her a merried woman, an’ him a 
;merried man?’’ 

“There’s no sayin’, laddie, what a han- 
vtle o’ men and some women wad du. I 
ihae muckle to be thankfu’ for ’at I was 
sic as no man ever luikit twice at. I 
wasna weel-faured eneuch, though I had 
bonny hair, an’ my mither aye said ’at 
her Maggy hed guid sense, whatever else 
•she micht or micht not hae. But gien I 
cud hae gotten a guid man, sic-like’s is 


scarce, I cud hae lo’ed him weel eneuch. 
But that’s naither here nor there, an’ has 
naething to du wi’ onybody ava. The 
pint I had to come till was this : the 
wuman ye saw handin’ a toot moot [tout 
muet?) wi’ that Cat’nach wife was nane 
ither, I do believe, than Mistress Stewart, 
the puir laird’s mither. An’ I hae as lit- 
tle doobt that whan ye tuik ’s pairt, ye 
broucht to noucht a plot o’ the twasum 
[two together) against him. It bodes 
guid to naebody whan there’s a conjunc 
o’ twa sic wanderin’ stars o’ blackness as 
yon twa.’’ 

“ His ain mither !’’ exclaimed Malcolm, 
brooding in horror over the frightful con- 
jecture. 

The door opened, and the mad laird 
came in. His eyes were staring wide, 
but their look and that of his troubled 
visage showed that he was awake only 
in some frightful dream. “Father o’ 
lichts !’’ he murmured once and again, 
but making wild gestures, as if warding 
off blows. Miss Horn took him gently 
by the hand. The moment he felt her 
touch, his face grew calm, and he sub- 
mitted at once to be led back to bed. 

“Ye may tak yer aith upo’ ’t, Ma’colm,’’ 
she said when she returned, “she means 
naething but ill by that puir cratur ; but 
you and me — we’ll ding [defeat) her yet, 
gien’t be His wull. She wants a grip o’ m 
for some ill rizzon or ither — to lock him 
up in a madhoose, maybe, as the villains 
said, or ’deed, maybe, to mak awa’ wi’ 
him a’thegither.’’ 

“ But what guid wad that du her said 
Malcolm. 

“ It’s ill to say, but sne waa hae him 
oot o’ her sicht, ony gait.’’ 

“ She can hae but little sicht o’ him as 
’tis,’’ objected Malcolm. 

“Ay ; but she aye kens he’s whaur she 
doesna ken, puttin’ her to shame, a’ 
aboot the coontry, wi’ that hump o’ his. 
Oot o’ fowk’s sicht wad be to her oot 
a’thegither.’’ 

A brief silence followed. 

“Noo,’’ said Malcolm, “we come to 
the queston what the twa limmers could 
want wi’ that door.’’ 

“ Dear kens ! It bude to be something 
wrang — that’s a’ ’at mortal can say ; but 


MALCOLM. 


ye may be sure o’ that. — I hae hard tell,” 
she went on reflectingly — ” o’ some room 
or Jther i’ the hoose ’at there’s a fearsome 
story aboot, an’ ’at ’s never opent on no 
accoont. I hae hard a’ aboot it, but I 
canna min’ upo’ ’t noo, for I paid little 
attention till ’t at the time, an’ it’s mony 
a year sin’ syne. But it wad be some 
deevilich ploy o’ their ain they wad be 
efter : it’s little the likes o’ them wad 
heed sic auld warld tales.” 

“Wad ye hae me tell the markis ?” 
asked Malcolm. 

“ Na, I wad no ; an’ yet ye maun du ’t. 
Ye hae no business to ken o’ onything 
wrang in a body’s hoose an’ no tell them 
— forbye ’at he pat ye in chairge. But it 
’ll du naething for the laird ; for what 
cares the markis for onything or ony- 
body but himsel’ ?” 

“He cares for ’s dauchter,” said Mal- 
colm. 

“Ow ay! — as sic fowk ca’ carin’. 
There’s no a bla’guard i’ the haill queen- 
try he wadna sell her till, sae be he was 
o’ an auld eneuch faimily, and had rowth 
o’ siller. Haith I noo-a-days the last ’ill 
come first, an’ a fish-cadger wi’ siller ’ill 
be coontit a better bargain nor a lord 
wantin’ ’t ; only he maun hae a heap o’ 
’t, to cower the stink o’ the fish.” 

“Dinna ye scorn the fish, mem,” said 
Malcolm: “they’re innocent craturs, an’ 
dinna smell waur nor they can help ; an’ 
that’s mair nor ye can say for ilka lord 
ye come athort.” 

“Ay, or cadger aither,” rejoined Miss 
Horn. “ They’re aft eneuch jist sic like, 
the main differ lyin’ in what they’re de- 
filed wi’ ; an’ ’deed whiles there’s no dif- 
fer there, or maist ony gait, maybe, but 
i’ the set o’ the shoothers an’ the wag o’ 
the tongue.” 

“An’ what ’ll we du wi’ the laird?” 
said Malcolm. 

“We maun first see what we can du 
wi’ him. I wad try to keep him mysel’ — 
that is, gien he wad bide — but there’s 
that jaud Jean 1 She’s aye gabbin’, an’ 
claikin’, an’ cognostin’ wi’ the enemy, 
an’ I canna lippen till her. I think it 
wad be better ye sud tak chairge o’ ’m 
yersel’, Ma’colm. I wad willin’ly beir 
ony expense — for ye wadna be able to 


105 

luik efter him an’ du sae weel at the 
fishin’, ye ken.” 

“Gien ’t had been my ain line-fishin’, 
I could aye ha’ taen him i’ the boat wi’ 
me ; but I dinna ken for the herrin’. 
Blue Peter wadna objeck, but it’s some 
rouch wark, an’ for a waikly body like 
the laird to be oot a’ nicht some nichts, 
sic weather as we hae to encoonter whiles, 
micht be the deid o’ ’im.” 

They came to no conclusion beyond 
this, that each would think it over, and 
Malcolm would call in the morning. 
Ere then, however, the laird had dis- 
missed the question for them. When 
Miss Horn rose, after an all-but sleepless 
night, she found that he had taken affairs 
again into his own feeble hands, and 
vanished. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

NOT AT CHURCH. 

It being well known that Joseph Mair’s 
cottage was one of the laird’s resorts, 
Malcolm, as soon as he learned his flight, 
set out to inquire whether they knew any- 
thing of him there. 

Scaurnose was perched almost on the 
point of the promontory, where the land 
made its final slope, ending in a precip- 
itous descent to the shore. Beneath lay 
rocks of all sizes and of fantastic forms, 
some fallen from the cape in tempests 
perhaps, some softly separated from it 
by the slow action of the winds and 
waves of centuries. A few of them 
formed, by their broken defence sea- 
ward, the unsafe natural harbor which 
was all the place enjoyed. 

If ever there was a place of one color, 
it was this village : everything was brown ; 
the grass near it was covered with brown 
nets ; at the doors were brown heaps of 
oak-bark, which, after dyeing the nets, 
was used for fuel ; the cottages were 
roofed with old brown thatch ; and the 
one street and the many closes were 
dark brown with the peaty earth which, 
well mixed with scattered bark, scantily 
covered the surface of its huge founda- 
tion-rock. There was no pavement, and 
it was the less needed that the ways were 


io6 


MALCOLM. 


rarely used by wheels of any description. 
The village was but a roost, like the 
dwellings of the sea-birds which also 
haunted the rocks. 

It was a gray morning with a gray 
sky and a gray sea ; all was brown and 
gray, peaceful and rather sad. Brown- 
haired, gray-eyed Phemy Mair sat on 
the threshold, intently rubbing in her 
hands a small object like a moonstone. 
That she should be doing so on a Sun- 
day would have shocked few in Scaur- 
nose at that time, for the fisher-folk then 
made but small pretensions to religion ; 
and for his part Joseph Mair could not 
believe that the Almighty would be of- 
fended “at seein’ a bairn stttin’ douce 
wi’ her playocks, though the day was 

Hisr 

“ Weel, Phemy, ye’re busy !’’ said Mal- 
colm. 

“Ay,” answered the child, without 
looking up. The manner was not court- 
eous, but her voice was gentle and sweet. 

“What are ye doin’ there?” he asked. 

“ Makin’ a string o’ beads, to weir at 
aunty’s merriage.” 

“What are ye makin’ them o’?” he 
went on. 

“Haddicks’ een.” 

“Are they a’ haddicks’.” 

“ Na, there’s some cods’ amo’ them ; 
but they’re maistly haddicks’. I pikes 
them oot afore they’re sautit, an’ biles 
them ; an’ syne I polish them i’ my ban’s 
till they’re rale bonny.” 

“Can ye tell me onything aboot the 
mad laird, Phemy ?” asked Malcolm, in 
his anxiety too abruptly. 

“Ye can gang an’ speir at my father: 
he’s oot aboot,” she answered, with a 
sort of marked coolness, which, added 
to the fact that she had never looked him 
in the face, made him more than suspect 
something behind. 

“ Div ye ken onything aboot him ?” he 
therefore insisted. 

“Maybe I div, an’ maybe I divna,” 
answered the child, with an expression 
of determined mystery. 

“Ye’ll tell me whaur ye think he is, 
Phemy ?” 

“ Na, I winna.” 

“What for no ?” 


“ Ow, jist for fear ye sud ken.” 

“ But I’m a freen’ till him.” 

“Ye may think ay, an’ the laird may 
think no.” 

“ Does he think you a freen’, Phemy ?” 
asked Malcolm, in the hope of coming 
at something by widening the sweep of 
the conversation. 

“ Ay, he kens I’m a freen’,” she replied. 

“An’ do ye aye ken whaur he is ?” 

“Na, no aye. He gangs here an’ he 
gangs there — jist as he likes. It’s whan 
naebody kens whaur he is that- 1 ken, 
an’ gang till him.” 

“ Is he i’ the hoose ?” 

“Na, he ’s no i’ the hoose.” 

“Whaur is he, than, Phemy?” said 
Malcolm coaxingly. “There’s ill fowk 
aboot ’at’s efter deein’ him an ill turn.” 

“The mair need no to tell !” retorted 
Phemy. 

“ But I want to tak care o’ ’im. Tell 
me whaur he is, like a guid lassie, 
Phemy.” 

“I’m no sure. I may say I dinna 
ken.” 

“Ye say ye ken whan ither fowk dis- 
na : noo naebody kens.” 

“ Hoo ken ye that ?” 

“’Cause he’s run awa.” 

“ Wha frae ? His mither ?” 

“Na, na; frae Miss Horn.” 

“I ken naething aboot her ; but gien 
naebody kens, I ken whaur he is weel 
eneuch.” 

“Whaur than ? Ye ’ll be duin’ him a 
guid turn to tell me.” 

“Whaur I winna tell, an’ whaur you 
nor nae ither body s’ get him. An’ ye 
needna speir, for it wadna be richt to 
tell; an’ gien ye gang on speirin’, you 
an’ me winna be lang freen’s.” 

^s she spoke, the child looked straight 
up into his face with wide-opened blue 
eyes, as truthful as the heavens, and 
Malcolm dared not press her, for it would 
have been to press her to do wrong. 

“Ye wad tell yer father, wadna ye?” 
he said kindly. 

“My father wadna speir. My father’s 
a guid man.” 

“ Weel, Phemy, though ye winna trust 
me, supposin’ I was to trust you?" 

1 “Ye can du that gien ye like.” 


MALCOLM. 


107 


“An’ ye winna tell ?’’ 

“ I s’ mak nae promises. It’s no trust- 
in’, to gar me promise.’’ 

“Weel, I wull trust ye. — Tell the laird 
to baud weel oot o’ sicht for a while.’’ 

“He’ll du that,’’ said Phemy. 

“ An tell him gien onything befa’ him, 
to sen’ to Miss Horn, for Ma’colm Mac- 
Phail may be oot wi’ the boats. — Ye win- 
na forget that ?’’ 

“I’m no lickly to forget it,’’ answered 
Phemy, apparently absorbed in boring a 
hole in a haddock’s eye with a pin so 
bent as to act like a brace and bit. 

“Ye’ll no get yer string o’ beads in 
time for the weddin’, Phemy,’’ remarked 
Malcolm, going on to talk from a desire 
to give the child a feeling of his friend- 
liness. 

“Ay will I — fine that,’’ she rejoined. 

“Whan is ’t to be T' 

“ Ow, neist Setterday. Ye’ll be cornin’ 
ower .?’’ 

“ I haena gotten a call.’’ 

“Ye ’ll be gettin’ ane.’’ 

“ Div ye think they’ll gie me ane ?’’ 

“As sune ’s onybody. — Maybe by that 
time I’ll be able to gie ye some news o’ 
the laird.’’ 

“ There’s a guid lassie !’’ 

“Na, na; I’m makin’ nae promises,’’ 
said Phemy. Malcolm left her and went 
to find her father, who, although it was 
Sunday, was already “oot aboot,’’ as she 
had said. He found him strolling in 
meditation along the cliffs. They had a 
little talk together, but Joseph knew 
nothing of the laird. 

Malcolm took Lossie House on his 
way back, for he had not yet seen the 
marquis, to whom he must report his 
adventures of the night before. The 
signs of past reveling were plentifully 
visible as he approached the house. The 
marquis was not yet up, but Mrs. Court- 
hope undertaking to send him word as 
soon as his lordship was to be seen, he 
threw himself on the grass and waited, 
his mind occupied with strange questions, 
started by the Sunday coming after such 
a Saturday — among the rest, how God 
could permit a creature to be born so 
distorted and helpless as the laird, and 
then permit him to be so abused in con- 


sequence of his helplessness. The prob- 
lems of life were beginning to bite. Ev- 
erywhere things appeared uneven. He 
was not one to complain of mere external 
inequalities : if he was inclined to envy 
Lord Meikleham, it was not because of 
his social position : he was even now 
philosopher enough to know that the life 
of a fisherman was preferable to that of 
such a marquis as Lord Lossie — that the 
desirableness of a life is to be measured 
by the amount of interest and not by the 
amount of ease in it, for the more ease 
the more unrest. Neither was he in- 
clined to complain of the gulf that yawn- 
ed so wide between him and Lady Flo- 
rimel. The difficulty lay deeper: such 
a gulf existing, by a social law only less 
inexorable than a natural one, why should 
he feel the rent invading his individual 
being ? in a word, though Malcolm put 
it in no such definite shape. Why should 
a fisher-lad find himself in danger of 
falling in love with the daughter of a 
marquis ? Why should such a thing, 
seeing the very constitution of things 
rendered it an absurdity, be yet a pos- 
sibility ? 

The church-bell began, rang on and 
ceased. The sound of the psalms came, 
softly mellow'ed, and sweetly harmonized, 
across the churchyard through the gray 
Sabbath air, and he found himself, for 
the first time, a stray sheep from the fold. 
The service must have been half through 
before a lackey, to whom Mrs. Courthope 
had committed the matter when she went 
to church, brought him the message that 
the marquis would see him. 

“Well, MacPhail, what do you want 
with me?’’ said his lordship as he -en- 
tered. 

“ It’s my duty to acquaint yer lordship 
wi’ certain proceedin’s ’at took place last 
night,’’ answered Malcolm. 

"Go on,’’ said the marquis. 

Thereupon Malcolm began at the be- 
ginning, and told of the men he had 
watched, and how, in the fancy of fol 
lowing them, he had found himself in 
the garret, and what he saw and did 
there. 

“ Did you recognize either of the wo- 
men ?’’ asked Lord Lossie. 


MALCOLM. 


io8 

‘‘Ane o’ them, my lord,” answered 
Malcolm. ‘‘It was Mistress Catanach, 
the howdie.” 

‘‘What sort of a woman is she ?” 

‘‘ Some fowk canna bide her, my lord. 
I ken no ill to lay till her chairge, but I 
wadna lippen till her. My gran’father 
— an’ he’s blin’, ye ken, — jist trimles 
whan she comes near him.” 

The marquis smiled. 

‘‘ What do you suppose she was about ?’ ’ 
he asked. 

‘‘I ken no more than the bonnet I 
flang in her face, my lord ; but it could 
hardly be guid she was efter. At ony 
rate, seein’ yer lordship pat me in a 
mainner in chairge, I bude to baud her 
oot o’ a closed room — an’ her gaein’ 
creepin’ oboot yer lordship’s hoose like 
a worm.” 

‘‘Quite right. Will you pull the bell 
there for me ?” 

He told the man to send Mrs. Court- 
hope ; but he said she had not yet come 
home from church. 

‘‘ Could you take me to the room, Mac- 
Phail ?” asked his lordship. 

‘‘ I’ll try, my lord,” answered Malcolm. 

As far as the proper quarter of the at- 
tics, he went straight as a pigeon ; in 
that labyrinth he had to retrace his steps 
once or twice, but at length he stopped, 
and said confidently — 

‘‘This is the door, my lord.” 

‘‘Are you sure ?” 

‘‘As .sure’s death, my lord.” 

The marquis tried the door and found 
it immovable. 

‘‘You say she had the key?” 

‘‘ No, my lord : I said she had keys, 
but whether she had key, I doobt if 
she kent hersel’. It may ha’ been ane 
o’ the bundle yet to try.” 

‘‘You’re a sharp fellow,” said the 
marquis. ‘‘ I wish I had such a servant 
about me.” 

‘‘ I wad mak a some rouch one, I 
doobt,” returned Malcolm laughing. 

His lordship was of another mind, but 
pursued the subject no farther. 

‘‘ I have a vague recollection,” he said, 
‘‘ of some room in the house having an 
old story or legend connected with it. I 
must find out. I dare say Mrs. Court- 


hope knows. Meantime you hold your 
tongue. We may get some amusement 
out of this.” 

‘‘ I wull, my lord, like a deid man an’ 
beeryt.” 

‘‘You can — can you ?” 

‘‘I can, my lord.” 

‘‘You are a rare one!” said the mar- 
quis. 

Malcolm thought he was making game 
of him as heretofore, and held his peace. 

‘‘You can go home, now,” said his 
lordship. ‘‘ I will see to this affair.” 

‘‘But jist be canny meddlin’ wi’ Mis- 
tress Catanach, my lord : she’s no 
mowse.” 

‘‘What! you’re not afraid of an old 
woman ?” 

‘‘ Deil a bit, my lord ! — that is. I’m no 
feart at a dogfish or a rottan, but I wad 
tak tent an’ grip them the richt gait, for 
they hae teeth. Some fowk thinks Mis- 
tress Catanach has mair teeth nor she 
shaws.” 

‘‘Well, if she’s too much for me. I’ll 
send for you,” said the marquis good- 
humoredly. 

‘‘Ye canna get me sae easy, my lord: 
we’re efter the herrin’ noo.” 

‘‘Well, well, we’ll see.” 

‘‘ But I wantit to tell ye anither thing, 
my lord,” said Malcolm, as he followed 
the marquis down the stairs. 

‘‘ What is that ?” 

‘‘ I cam upo’ anither plot — a mair se- 
rious ane, bein’ against a man ’at can ill 
haud aff o’ himsel’, an’ cud waur bide 
onything than yer lordship — the puir 
mad laird.” 

‘‘Who’s he ?” 

‘‘ Ilka body kens him, my lord ! He’s 
son to the leddy o’ Kirkbyres.” 

‘‘ I remember her — an old flame of my 
brother’s.” 

‘‘ I ken nae thing aboot that, my lord ; 
but he’s her son.” 

‘‘What about him, then ?” 

They had now reached the hall, and, 
seeing the marquis impatient, Malcolm 
confined himself to the principal facts. 

‘‘ I don’t think you had any business 
to interfere, MacPhail,” said his lord- 
ship seriously. ‘‘ His mother must know 
best.” 


MALCOLM. 


109 


“ I’m no sae sure o’ that, my lord ! ’ To 
say naething o’ the illguideship, which 
micht hae garred a minister sweer, it 
wad be a cruelty naething short o’ deev’- 
lich to lock up a puir hairmless cratur 
like that,’ as innocent as he ’s ill-shapit.” 

‘‘He’s as God made him,” said the 
marquis. 

‘‘ He ’s no as God wull mak him,” re- 
turned Malcolm. 

‘‘What do you mean by that?” asked 
the marquis. 

‘‘ It Stan’s to rizzon, my lord,” answer- 
ed Malcolm, ‘‘ that what’s ill-made maun 
be made ower again. There’s a day corn- 
in’ whan a’ ’at’s wrang ’ill be set richt, ye 
ken.” 

‘‘And the crooked made straight,” 
suggested the marquis, laughing. 

‘‘Doobtless, my lord. He’ll be 
stra,uchtit oot bonny that day,” said 
Malcolm with absolute seriousness. 

‘‘Bah! You don’t think God cares 


about a misshapen lump of flesh like 
that 1” exclaimed his lordship with con- 
tempt. 

‘‘As muckle’s aboot yersel’ or my led- 
dy,” said Malcolm. ‘‘Gien he didna, he 
wadna be nae God ava’ {at all)." 

The marquis laughed again : he heard 
the words with his ears, but his heart 
was deaf to the thought they clothed; 
hence he took Malcolm’s earnestness for 
irreverence, and it amused him. 

"You'yo: not got to set things right, 
anyhow,” he said. ‘‘You mind your 
own business.” 

‘‘ I’ll try, my lord : it’s the business o’ 
ilka man, whaur he can, to lowse the 
weichty birns, an’ lat the forfouchten 
gang free.* — Guid-day to ye, my lord.” 

So saying, the young fisherman turn- 
ed, and left the marquis laughing in the 
hall. 

* Isa. Iviii. 6. 



FJ^iE^rn "vz. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

LORD GERNON. 

W HEN his housekeeper returned 
from church, Lord Lossie sent for 

her. 

“Sit down, Mrs. Courthope,” he said. 
“ I want to ask you about a story I have 
a vague recollection of hearing when I 
spent a summer at this house some twen- 
ty years ago. It had to do with a room 
in the house that was never opened.” 

“There is such a story, my lord,” an- 
swered the housekeeper. “ The late mar- 
quis, I remember well, used to laugh at 
it, and threaten now and then to dare 
the prophecy ; but old Eppie persuaded 
him not — or at least fancied she did.” 
“Who is old Eppie ?” 

“She’s gone now, my lord. She was 
over a hundred then. She was born and 
brought up in the house, liv.ed all her 
days in it, and died in it ; so she knew 
more about the place than any one 
else — ” 

“Is ever likely to know,” said the 
marquis, superadding a close to her sen- 
tence. “And why wouldn’t she have 
the room opened ?” he asked. 

“ Because of the ancient prophecy, my 
lord.” 

“I can’t recall a single point of the 
story.” 

“ I wish old Eppie were alive to tell 
it,” said Mrs. Courthope. 

*'* Don'i you know it, then ?” 

“Yes, pretty well, but my English 
tongue can’t tell it properly. It doesn’t 
sound right out of my mouth. I’ve 
heard it a good many times too, for I 
had often to take a visitor to her room 
to hear it, and the old woman liked 
nothing better than telling it. But I 
couldn’t help remarking that it had 
grown a good bit even in my time. The 
story was like a tree : it got bigger every 
year.” 

“That’s the way with a good many 
no 


stories,” said the marquis. “But tell 
me the prophecy, at least.” 

“ That is the only part I can give just 
as she gave it. It’s in rhyme. I hardly 
understand it, but I’m sure of the words.” 

“ Let us have them, then, if you please.” 

Mrs. Courthope reflected for a mo- 
ment, and then repeated the following 
lines : 

The lord quha wad sup on 3 thowmes o' cauld aim. 

The ayr quha wad kythe a bastard and carena. 
The mayd quha wad tyne her man and her bairn. 

Lift the sneck, and enter, and fearna. 

“That’s it, my lord,” she said, in con- 
clusion. “And there’s one thing to be 
observed,” she added — “that that door 
is the only one in all the passage that 
has a sneck, as they call it.” 

“What is a sneck?” asked his lord- 
ship, who was not much of a scholar in 
his country’s tongue. 

“What we call a latch in England, 
my lord. I took pains to learn the 
Scotch correctly, and I’ve repeated it to 
your lordship word for word.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” returned Lord Los- 
sie, “but for the sense, I can make noth- 
ing of it. And you think my brother be- 
lieved the story ?” 

“ He always laughed at it, my lord, 
but pretended at least to give in to old 
Eppie’s entreaties.” 

“You mean that he was more near 
believing it than he liked to confess ?” 

“That’s not what I mean, my lord.” 

“Why do you say pretended, then ?” 

“ Because when the news of his death 
came, some people about the place would 
have it that he must have opened the 
door some time or other.” 

“ How did they make that out ?” 

“From the first line of the prophecy..” 

“Repeat it again.” 

“ The lord quha wad sup on 3 thowmes 
o’ cauld aim,” said Mrs. Courthope with 
emphasis, adding, “The three she al- 
ways said was a figure 3.” 


MALCOLM. 


Ill 


“That implies it was written some- 
where ?’’ 

“ She said it was legible on the door 
in her day, as if burnt with a red-hot 
iron.’’ 

“And what does the line mean ?’’ 

“ Eppie said it meant that the lord of 
the place who opened that door would 
die by a sword-wound. Three inches of 
cold iron it means, my lord.’’ 

The marquis grew thoughtful : his 
brother had died in a sword-duel. For 
a few moments he was silent. “ Tell me 
the whole story,’’ he said at length. 

Mrs. Coiirthope again reflected, and be- 
gan. I will tell the story, however, in my 
own words, reminding my reader that if he 
regards it as an unwelcome interruption, 
he can easily enough avoid this bend of 
the river of rny narrative by taking a, 
short cut across to the next chapter. 

In an ancient time there was a lord 
of Lossie who practiced unholy works. 
Although he had other estates, he lived 
almost entirely at the House of Lossie — 
that is, after his return from the East, 
where he had spent his youth and early 
manhood. But he paid no attention to 
his affairs : a steward managed every- 
thing for him, and Lord Gernon'(for that 
was the outlandish name he brought from 
England, where he was born while his 
father was prisoner to Edward Long- 
shanks) trusted him for a great while 
withouX. making the least inquiry into his 
accounts, apparently contented with re- 
ceiving money enough to carry on the 
various vile experiments which seemed 
his sole pleasure in life. There was no 
doubt in the minds of the people of the 
town — the old town, that is, which was 
then much larger, and clustered about 
the gates of the House — that he had 
dealings with Satan, from whom he had 
gained authority over the powers of Na- 
ture ; that he was able to rouse and lay 
the winds, to bring down rain, to call 
forth the lightnings and set the thunders 
roaring over town and sea ; nay, that he 
'could even draw vessels ashore on the 
rocks, with the certainty that not one on 
board would be left alive to betray the 
pillage of the wreck; this and many 


other deeds of dire note were laid to his 
charge in secret. The town cowered at 
the foot of the House in terror of what 
its lord might bring down upon it, as a 
brood of chickens might cower if they 
had been hatched by a .kite, and saw, 
instead of the matronly head and beak 
of the hen of their instinct, those of the 
bird of prey projected over them. Scarce 
one of them dared even look from the 
door when the thunder was rolling over 
their heads, the lightnings flashing about 
the roofs and turrets of the House, the 
wind raving in fits between as if it would 
rave its last, and the rain falling in sheets 
— not so much from fear of the elements 
as for horror of the far more terrible 
things that might be spied careering in 
the storm. And indeed Lord Gernon 
himself was avoided in like fashion, 
although rarely had any one the evil 
chance of seeing him, so seldom did he 
go out of doors. There was but one in 
the whole community — and that was a 
young girl, the daughter of his steward 
— who declared she had no fear of him : 
she went so far as to uphold that Lord 
Gernon meant harm to nobody, and was 
in consequence regarded by the neigh- 
bors as unrighteously bold. 

He worked in a certain lofty apart- 
ment on the ground floor, with cellars 
underneath, reserved, it was believed, for 
frightfulest conjuratiohs and interviews; 
where, although no one was permitted to 
enter, they knew from the smoke that he 
had a furnace, and from the evil smells 
which wandered out that he dealt with 
things altogether devilish in their natures 
and powers. They said he always wash- 
ed there — in water medicated with dis- 
tillments to prolong life and produce in- 
vulnerability ; but of this they could of 
course know nothing. Strange to say, 
however, he always slept in the garret — 
as far removed from his laboratory as 
the limits of the house would permit; 
whence people said he dared not sleep 
in the neighborhood of his deeds, but 
sought shelter for his unconscious hours 
in the spiritual shadow of the chapel, 
which was in the same wing as his cham- 
ber. His household saw nearly as little 
of him as his retainers : when his tread 


II2 


MALCOLM, 


was heard, beating dull on the stone turn- 
pike or thundering along the upper cor- 
ridors in the neighborhood of his cham- 
ber or of the library — the only other part 
of the house he visited — man or maid 
would dart aside into the next way of 
escape, all believing that the nearer he 
came to finding himself the sole inhab- 
itant of his house, the better he was 
pleased. Nor would he allow man or 
woman to enter his chamber any more 
than his laboratory. When they found 
sheets or garments outside his door, they 
removed them with fear and trembling, 
and put others in their place. 

At length, by means of his enchant- 
ments, he discovered that the man whom 
he had trusted had been robbing him for 
many years : all the time he had been 
searching for the philosopher’s stone the 
gold already his had been tumbling into 
the bags of his steward. But what en- 
raged him far more was, that the fellow 
had constantly pretended difficulty in 
providing the means necessary for the 
prosecution of his idolized studies : even 
if the feudal lord could have accepted 
the loss and forgiven the crime, here was 
a mockery which the man of science 
could not pardon. He summoned his 
steward to his presence and accused him 
of his dishonesty. The man denied it 
energetically, but a few mysterious waft- 
ures of the hand of his lord set him 
trembling, and after a few more his lips, 
moving by a secret compulsion, and find- 
ing no power in their owner to check their 
utterance, confessed all the truth, where- 
upon his master ordered him to go and 
bring his accounts. He departed all but 
bereft of his senses, and staggered home 
as if in a dream. There he begged his 
daughter to go and plead for him with 
his lord, hoping she might be able to 
move him to mercy ; for she was a love- 
ly girl, and supposed by the neighbors, 
judging from what they considered her 
foolhardiness, to have received from him 
tokens of something at least less than 
aversion. 

She obeyed, and from that hour dis- 
appeared. The people of the house 
averred afterward that the next day, and 
for days following, they heard, at inter- 


vals, moans and cries from the wizard’s 
chamber or somewhere in its neighbor- 
hood — certainly not from the laboratory ; 
but as they had seen no one visit their 
master, they had paid them little atten- 
tion, classing them with the other and 
hellish noises they were but too much 
accustomed to hear. 

The steward’s love for his daughter, 
though it could not embolden him to 
seek her in the tyrant’s den, drove him, 
at length, to appeal to the justice of his 
country for what redress might yet be 
possible : he sought the court of the 
great Bruce and laid his complaint be- 
fore him. That righteous monarch im- 
mediately despatched a few of his trust- 
iest men-at-arms, under the protection 
of a monk whom he believed a match 
for any wizard under the sun, to arrest 
Lord Gernon and release the girl. When 
they arrived at Lossie House they found 
it silent as the grave. The domestics 
had vanished, but by following the mi- 
nute directions of the steward, whom no 
persuasion could bring to set foot across 
the threshold, they succeeded in finding 
their way to the parts of the house indi- 
cated by him. Having forced the labor- 
atory and found it forsaken, they ascend- 
ed, in the gathering dusk of a winter 
afternoon, to the upper regions of the 
house. Before they reached the top of 
the stair that led to the wizard’s cham- 
ber they began to hear inexplicable 
sounds, which grew plainer, though not 
much louder, as they drew nearer to the 
door. They were mostly like the grunt- 
ing of some small animal of the hog 
kind, with an occasional one like the 
yelling roar of a distant lion ; but with 
these were now and then mingled cries 
of suffering so fell and strange that their 
souls recoiled as if they would break 
loose from their bodies to get out of hear- 
ing of them. The monk himself start- 
ed back when first they invaded his ear, 
and it was no wonder then that the men- 
at-arms should hesitate to approach the 
room ; and as they stood irresolute they 
saw a faint light go flickering across the 
upper part of the door, which naturally 
strengthened their disinclination to go 
nearer. 


MALCOLM. 


“If it weren’t for the girl,’’ said one 
of them in a scared whisper to his neigh- 
bor, “I would leave the wizard to the 
devil and his dam.’’ 

Scarcely had the words left his mouth 
when the door opened, and out came a 
form — whether phantom or living wo- 
man none could tell. I)ale, forlorn, lost 
and purposeless, it came straight toward 
them, with wide unseeing eyes. They 
parted in terror from its path. It went on, 
looking to neither hand, and sank down 
the stair. The moment it was beyond 
their sight they came to themselves and 
rushed after it, but although they search- 
ed the whole house, they could find no 
creature in it, except a cat of questionable 
appearance and behavior, which they 
wisely let alone. Returning, they took 
up a position whence they could watch 
the door of the chamber day and night. 

For three weeks they watched it, but 
neither cry nor other sound reached 
them. For three weeks more they watch- 
ed it, and then an evil odor began to as- 
sail them, which grew and grew, until at 
length they were satisfied that the wizard 
was dead. They returned therefore to 
the king and made their report, where- 
upon Lord Gernon was decreed dead 
and his heir was enfeoffed. But for 
many years he was said to be still alive ; 
and indeed whether he had ever died in 
the ordinary sense of the word was to 
old Eppie doubtful, for at various times 
there had arisen whispers of peculiar 
sounds, even strange cries, having been 
heard issue from that room — whispers 
which had revived in the house in Mrs. 
Courthope’s own time. No one had 
slept in that part of the roof within the 
memory of old Eppie : no one, she be- 
lieved, had ever slept there since the 
events of her tale ; certainly no one had 
in Mrs. Courthope’s ’time. It was said 
also that invariably, sooner^r later after 
such cries were heard, some evil befell 
either the lord of Lossie or some one of 
his family. 

“ Show me the room, Mrs. Courthope,’’ 
said the marquis, rising, as soon as she 
had ended. 

The housekeeper looked at him with 
some dismay. 

8 


113 

“What!’’ said his lordship, “you an 
Englishwoman and superstitious !’’ 

“ I am cautious, my lord, though not a 
Scotchwoman,’’ returned Mrs. Courthope. 
“All I would presume to say is. Don’t do 
it without first taking time to think over 
it.’’ 

“I will not. But I want to know which 
room it is.’’ 

Mrs. Courthope led the way, and his 
lordship followed her to the very door, 
as he had expected, with which Malcolm 
had spied Mrs. Catanach tampering. He 
examined it well, and on the upper part 
of it found what might be the remnants 
of a sunk inscription, so far obliterated 
as to convey no assurance of what it was. 
He professed himself satisfied, and they 
went down the stairs together again. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A FISHER- WEDDING. 

When the next Saturday came, all the 
friends of the bride or bridegroom who 
had “gotten a call ’’ to the wedding of 
Annie Mair and Charley Wilson assem- 
bled respectively at the houses of their 
parents. Malcolm had received an in- 
vitation from both, and had accepted 
that of the bride. 

Whisky and oat -cake having been 
handed round, the bride, a short but 
comely young woman, set out with her 
father for the .church, followed by her 
friends in couples. At the door of the 
church, which stood on the highest point 
in the parish, a centre of assault for all 
the winds that blew, they met the bride- 
groom and his party : the bride and he 
entered the church together, and the rest 
followed. After a brief and somewhat 
bare ceremony, they issued — the bride 
walking between her brother and the 
groomsman, each taking an arm of the 
bride, and the company following, main- 
ly in trios. Thus arranged, they walked 
eastward along the high-road to meet the 
bride’s firstfoot. 

They had gone about halfway to Port- 
lossie when a gentleman appeared, saun- 
tering carelessly toward them with a 
cigar in his mouth. It was Lord Mei- 


MALCOLM. 


114 

kleham. Malcolm was not the only one 
who knew him. Lizzy Findlay, only 
daughter of the Partan, and the prettiest 
girl in the company, blushed crimson : 
she had danced with him at Lossie House, 
and he had said things to her, by way of 
•polite attention, which he would never 
have said had she been of his own rank. 
He would have lounged past with a care- 
less glance, but the procession halted by 
one consent, and the bride, taking a bot- 
tle and glass which her brother carried, 
proceeded to pour out a bumper of whis- 
ky, while the groomsman addres^d Lord 
Meikleham. “Ye’ ’re the bride’s first 
fut, sir,’’ he said. 

“What do you mean by that ?’’ asked 
Lord Meikleham. 

“ Here’s the bride, sir : she’ll tell ye.’’ 

Lord Meikleham lifted his hat. “Al- 
low me to congratulate you,’’ he said. 

“Ye ’re my first fut,’’ returned the bride 
eagerly yet modestly, as she held out to 
him the glass of whisky. 

“This is to console me for not being in 
the bridegroom’s place, I presume ; but 
notwithstanding my jealousy, I drink 
to the health of both,’’ said the young 
nobleman, and tossed off the liquor. 
“Would you mind explaining to me 
what you mean by this ceremony ?’’ he 
added, to cover a slight choking caused 
by the strength of the dram. 

“ It’s for luck, sir,’’ answered Joseph 
Mair. “A first fut wha wadna bring ill- 
luck upon a new-married couple maun 
aye du as ye hae dune this mecnute — 
tak a dram frae the bride.’’ 

>' “Is that the sole privilege connected 
with my good fortune?’’ said Lord Mei- 
kleham. “ If I take the bride’s dram, I 
must join the bride’s regiment. — My 
good fellow,’’ he went on, approaching 
Malcolm, “you have more than your 
share of the best things of this world.’’ 

For Malcolm had two partners, and 
the one on the side next Lord Meikle- 
ham, who, as he spoke, offered her his 
arm, was Lizzy Findlay. 

“No as shares gang, my lord,’’ re- 
turned Malcolm, tightening his arm on 
Lizzy’s hand. “Ye maunna gang wi' 
ane o’ oor customs to gang agane an- 
ither. Fisher fowk’s ready eneuch to 


pairt wi’ their whusky, but no wi’ their 
lasses ! Na, haith !’’ 

Lord Meikleham’s face flushed, and 
Lizzy looked down, very evidently dis- 
appointed ; but the bride’s father, a 
wrinkled and brown little man, with a 
more gentle bearing than most of them, 
interfered : “Ye^see, my lord — gien it be 
sae I maun ca’ ye, an’ Ma’colm seems to 
ken — we’re like by oorsel’s for the pres- 
ent, an’ we’re but a rouch set o’ fowk for 
sic like ’s yer lordship to haud word o’ 
mou’ wi’ ; but gien it wad please ye to 
come ower the gait ony time i’ the even- 
in’, an’ tak yer share o’ what’s gauin’, ye 
sud be walcome, an’ we wad coont it a 
great honor frae sic’s yer lordship.’’ 

“ I shall be most happy,’’ answered 
Lord Meikleham; and, taking off his 
hat, he went his way. 

The party returned to the home of the 
bride’s parents. Her mother stood at 
the door with a white handkerchief in 
one hand and a quarter of oat-cake in 
the other. When the bride reached the 
threshold she stood, and her mother, 
first laying the handkerchief on her head, 
broke the oat-cake into pieces upon it. 
These were distributed among the com- 
pany, to be carried home and laid under 
their pillows. 

The bridegroom’s party betook them- 
selves to his father’s house, where, as 
well as at old Mair’s, a substantial meal 
of tea, bread and butter, cake and cheese 
was provided. Then followed another 
walk, to allow of both houses being made 
tidy for the evening’s amusements. 

About seven Lord Meikleham made 
his appearance, and had a hearty wel- 
come. He had bought a showy brooch 
for the bride, which she accepted with 
the pleasure of a child. In their games, 
which had already commenced, he joined 
heartily, gaining high favor with both 
men and '^omen. When the great 
clothes-basket full of sweeties, the result 
of a subscription among the young men, 
was carried round by two of them, he 
helped himself liberally with the rest, 
and at the inevitable game of forfeits 
met his awards with unflinching obedi- 
ence ; contriving ever through it all that 
Lizzy Findlay should feel herself his fa- 


MALCOLM. 


I15 


vorite. In the general hilarity neither 
the heightened color of her cheek nor 
the vivid sparkle in her eyes attracted 
notice. Doubtless some of the girls ob- 
served the frequency of his attentions, 
but it woke nothing in their minds be- 
yond a little envy of her passing good 
fortune. 

Meikleham was handsome and a lord ; 
Lizzy was pretty, though a fisherman’s 
daughter : a sort of Darwinian selection 
had apparently found place between 
them ; but as the same entertainment 
was going on in two houses at once, and 
there was naturally a good deal of pass- 
ing and repassing between them, no one* 
took the least notice of several short ab- 
sences from the company on the part of 
the pair. 

Supper followed, at which his lordship 
sat next to Lizzy and partook of dried 
skate and mustard, bread and cheese 
and beer. Every man helped himself. 
Lord Meikleham and a few others were 
accommodated with knives and forks, 
but the most were independent of such 
artificial aids. Whisky came next, and 
Lord Meikleham, being already, like 
many of the young men of his time, 
somewhat fond of strong drink, was not 
content with such sipping as Lizzy hon- 
ored his glass withal. 

At length it was time, according to 
age-long custom, to undress the bride 
and bridegroom and put them to bed — 
the bride’s stocking, last ceremony of all, 
being thrown amongst the company, as 
by its first contact prophetic of the per- 
son to be next married. Neither Lizzie 
nor Lord Meikleham, however, had any 
chance of being thus distinguished, for 
they were absent and unmissed. 

As soon as all was over Malcolm set 
out to return home. Ashe passed Joseph 
Mair’s cottage he found Phemy waiting 
for him at the door, still in the mild 
splendor of her pearl-like necklace. 

“ I tellt the laird what ye tellt me to tell 
him, Ma’colm,” she said. 

“An’ what did he say, Phemy?’’ asked 
Malcolm. 

“ He said he kent ye was a freen’.’’ 

“Was that a’ ?’’ 

“Ay, that was a’.“ 


“Weel, ye’re a guid lassie.’’ 

“Ow! middlin’,’’ answered the little 
maiden. 

Malcolm took his way along the top 
of the cliffs, pausing now and 'then to 
look around him. The crescent moon 
had gone down, leaving a star-lit night, 
in which the sea lay softly moaning at 
the foot of the broken crags. The sense 
of infinitude which comes to the soul 
when it is in harmony with the peace of 
Nature arose and spread itself abroad in 
Malcolm’s being, and he felt with the 
Galileans of old, when they forsook their 
nets and followed Him who called them, 
that catching fish was not the end of his 
being, although it was the work his hands 
had found to do. The stillness was all 
the sweeter for its contrast with the mer- 
riment he had left behind him, and a 
single breath of wind, like the waft from 
a passing wing, kissed his forehead ten- 
derly, as if to seal the truth of his medi- 
tations. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

FLORIMEL AND DUNCAN. 

In the course of a fortnight Lord Mei- 
kleham and his aunt, the bold-faced 
countess, had gone, and the marquis, 
probably finding it a little duller in con- 
sequence, began to pay visits in the 
neighborhood. Now and then he would 
be absent for a week or two — at Bog o’ 
Gight, or Huntly Lodge, or Frendraught, 
or Balvenie — and although Lady Flori- 
mel had not had much of his society, 
she missed him at meals, and felt the 
place grown dreary from his being no- 
where within its bounds. 

On his return from one nf his longer 
absences he began to talk to her about a 
governess, but, though in a playful way, 
she rebelled utterly at the first mention 
of such an incubus. She had plenty of 
material for study, she said, in the library, 
and plenty of amusement in wandering 
about with the sullen Demon, who was 
her constant companion during hij ab- 
sences ; and if he did force a governess 
upon her she would certainly murder the 
woman, if only for the sake of bringing 


ii6 


MALCOLM. 


him into trouble. Her easy-going father 
was amused, laughed, and said nothing 
more on the subject at the time. 

Lady Florimel did not confess that she 
had begun to feel her life monotonous, 
or mention that she had for some time 
been cultivating the acquaintance of a 
few of her poor neighbors, and finding 
their odd ways of life and thought and 
speech interesting. She had especially 
taken a liking to Duncan MacPhail, in 
which, strange to say. Demon, who had 
hitherto absolutely detested the appear- 
ance of any one not attired as a lady or 
gentleman, heartily shared. She found 
the old man so unlike anything she had 
ever heard or read of — so full of grand 
notions in such contrast with his poor 
conditions — so proud yet so overflowing 
with service, dusting a chair for her with 
his bonnet, yet drawing himself up like 
an offended hidalgo if she declined to sit 
in it — more than content to play the pipes 
while others dined, yet requiring a per- 
sonal apology from the marquis himself 
for a practical joke — so full of kindness, 
and yet of revenges, lamenting over De- 
mon when he hurt his foot, yet cursing, 
as she overheard him once, in fancied 
solitude, with an absolute fervor of im- 
precation, a continuous blast of poetic 
hate which made her shiver; and the 
next moment sighing out a most wailful 
coronach on his old pipes. It was all so 
odd, so funny, so interesting. It nearly 
made her aware of human nature as an 
object of study. But Lady Florimel had 
never studied anything yet, had never 
even perceived that anything wanted 
studying — that is, demanded to be un- 
derstood. What appeared to her most 
odd, most inconsistent, and was indeed 
of all his peculiarities alone distasteful to 
her, was his delight in what she regarded 
only as the menial and dirty occupation 
of cleaning lamps and candlesticks : the 
poetic side of it, rendered tenfold poetic 
by his blindness, she never saw. 

Then he had such tales to tell her of 
mountain, stream and lake ; of love and 
revenge ; of beings less and more than 
natural — brownie and Boneless, kelpie 
and fairy; such wild legends also, haunt- 
ing the dim emergent peaks of mist- 


swathed Celtic history ; such songs, come 
down, he said, from Ossian himself, that 
sometimes she would sit and listen to 
him for hours together. 

It was no wonder, then, that she should 
win the heart of the simple old man 
speedily, for what can bard desire be- 
yond a true listener — a mind into which 
his own may, in verse or tale or rhapso- 
dy, in pibroch or coronach, overflow ? 
But when, one evening, in girlish merri- 
ment, she took up his pipes, blew the 
bag full, and began to let a highland air 
burst fitfully from the chanter, the jubila- 
tion of the old man broke all the bounds 
of reason. He jumped from his seat 
and capered about the room, calling her 
all the tenderest and most poetic names 
his English vocabulary would afford 
him; then abandoning the speech of the 
Sassenach, as if in despair of ever utter- 
ing himself through its narrow and rug- 
ged channels, overwhelmed her with a 
cataract of soft-flowing Gaelic, returning 
to English only as his excitement passed 
over into exhaustion, but in neither case 
aware of the transition. 

Her visits were the greater comfort to 
Duncan that Malcolm was now absent 
almost every night, and most days a 
good many hours asleep : had it been 
otherwise, Florimel, invisible for very 
width as was the gulf between them, 
could hardly have made them so fre- 
quent. Before the fishing-season was 
over the piper had been twenty times on 
the verge of disclosing every secret in his 
life to the high-born maiden. 

“ It’s a pity you haven’t a wife to take 
care of you, Mr. MacPhail,” she said one 
evening. “You must be so lonely with- 
out a womah to look after you.” 

A dark cloud came over Duncan’s 
face, out of which his sightless eyes 
gleamed. “She’ll haf her poy, and 
she’ll pe wanting no wife,” he said sul- 
lenly. “Wifes is paad.” 

■ “Ah.” said Florimel, the teasing spirit 

of her father uppermost for the moment, 
“that accounts for your swearing so 
shockingly the other day ?” 

“Swearing, was she? Tat will be 
wrong. And who was she ’ll pe swear- 
ing at ?” 


MALCOLM. 


“That’s what I want you to tell me, 
Mr. MacPhail.” 

“ Did you’ll hear her, my laty ?’’ he 
asked in a tone of reflection, as if trying 
to recall the circumstance. 

“Indeed I did. You frightened me so 
that I didn’t dare come in.’’ 

“Then she’ll pe punished enough. 
Put it wass no harm to curse ta wicket 
Cawmill.’’ 

“ It was not Glenlyon — it wasn’t a man 
at all : it was a woman you were in such 
a rage with.’’ 

“Was it ta rascal’s wife, then, my 
laty ?’’ he asked, as if he were willing 
to be guided to the truth that he might 
satisfy her, but so much in the habit of 
swearing that he could not well recollect 
the particular object at a given time. 

“Is his wife as bad as himself, then?’’ 

“Wifes is aalways worsen” 

“ But what is it make§ you hate him 
so dreadfully ? Is he a bad man ?” 

“A ferry bad man, my tear laty. He 
is tead more than a hundert years.” 

“Then why do you hate him so ?” 

“Och hone ! Ton’t you'll never hear 
why ?” 

“He can’t have done/<?^/ any harm.” 

“Not done old Tuncan any harm! 
Tidn’t you’ll know what ta tog would pe 
toing to her ancestors of Glenco ! Och 
hone 1 och hone I Gif her ta tog’s heart 
of him in her teeth, and she’ll pe tear- 
ing it — tearing it — tearing it!” cried the 
piper in a growl of hate and with the 
look of a maddened tiger, the skin of 
his face drawn so tight over the bones 
that they seemed to show their whiteness 
through it. 

“You quite terrify me,” said Florimel, 
really shocked. “ If you talk like that I 
must go away. Such words are not fit 
for a lady to hear.” 

The old man heard her rise : he fell 
on his knees and held out his arms in 
entreaty. 

“ She’s pegging your pardons, my laty. 
Sit town once more, anchel from hefen, 
and she’ll not say it no more. Put she’ll 
pe telling you ta story, and then you’ll 
pe knowing tat what ’ll not pe fit for 
laties to hear, as coot laties had to pear. 

He caught up the Lossie pipes, threw 


117 

them down again, searched in a frenzy 
till he found his own, blew up the bag 
with short quick pants, forced from them 
a low wail, which ended in a scream, 
then broke into a kind of chant, the 
words of which were something like 
what follows : he had sense enough left 
to remember that for his listener they 
must be English. Doubtless he was 
translating as he went on. His chanter 
all the time kept up a low pitiful accom- 
paniment, his voice only giving expres- 
sion to the hate and execration of the 
song : 

Black rise the hills round the vale of Glenco; 

Hard rise its rocks up the sides of the sky ; 

Cold fall the streams from the snow on their summits ; 
Bitter are the winds that search for the wanderer; 
False are the vapors that trail o’er the correi : 

Blacker than caverns that hollow the mountain. 
Harder than crystals in the rock’s bosom. 

Colder than ice borne down in the torrents. 

More bitter than hail wind-swept o’er the correi. 
Falser than vapors that hide the dark precipice. 

Is the heart of the Campbell, the hell-hound Glenlyon. 

Is it blood that is streaming down into the valley ? 
Ha ! ’tis the red-coated bloodhounds of Orange. 

To hunt the red deer, is this a fit season ? 

Glenlyon, said Ian, the son of the chieftain. 

What seek ye with guns and with gillies so many ? 

Friends, a warm fire, good cheer, and a drink. 

Said the liar of hell, with the death in his heart. 

Come home to my house — it is poor, but your own. 

Cheese of the goat, and flesh of black cattle. 

And dew of the mountain to make their hearts joyful. 
They gave them in plenty, they gave them with wel- 
come ; 

And they slept on the heather and skins of the red 
deer. 

Och hone for the chief! God’s curse on the traitors ! 
Och hone for the chief, the father of his people ! 

He is struck through the brain, and not in the battle ! 

Och hone for his lady 1 the teeth of the badgers 
Have torn the bright rings from her slender fingers 1 
They have stripped her, and shamed her in sight of 
her clansmen ! 

They have sent out her ghost to cry after her husband. 

Nine men did Glenlyon slay, nine of the true hearts I 
His own host he slew, the laird of Inverriggen. 

Fifty they slew — the rest fled to the mountains. 

In the deep snow the women and children 
Fell down and slept, nor awoke in the morning. 

The bard of the glen, alone among strangers, 
Allister, bard of the glen and the mountain. 

Sings peace to the ghost of his father’s father. 

Slain by the curse of Glenco, Glenlyon. 

Curse on Glenlyon ! His wife’s fair bosom 
Dry up with weeping the fates of her children ! 

Curse on Glenlyon ! Each drop of his heart’s blood 


MALCOLM. 


Ii8 

Turn to red fire and burn through his arteries ! 

The pale murdered faces haunt him to madness ! 

The shrieks of the ghosts from the mists of Glenco 
Ring in his ears through the caves of perdition ! 

Man, woman, and child, to the last-born Campbell, 
Rush howling to hell, and fall cursing Glenlyon — 
The liar who drank with his host and then slew him ! 

While he chanted the whole being of 
the bard seemed to pour itself out in the 
feeble and quavering tones that issued 
from his withered throat. His voice 
grew in energy for a while as he pro- 
ceeded, but at last gave way utterly un- 
der the fervor of imprecation, and ceased. 
Then, as if in an agony of foiled hate, 
he sent from chanter and drone a per- 
fect screech of execration, with which the 
instrument dropped from his hands and 
he fell back in his chair speechless. 

Lady Florimel started to her feet, and 
stood trembling for a moment, hesita- 
ting whether to run from the cottage and 
call for help, or do what she might for 
the old man herself. But the next mo- 
ment he came to himself, saying in a 
tone of assumed composure, “You’ll pe 
knowing now, my laty, why she’ll pe 
hating ta ferry name of Clenlyon.’’ 

“ But it wasn’t your grandfather that 
Glenlyon killed, Mr. MacPhail, was it ?’’ 

“And whose grandfather would it pe 
then, my laty ?’’ returned Duncan, draw- 
ing himself up. 

“The Glenco people weren’t Mac- 
Phails. I’ve read the story of the mas- 
sacre, and know all about that.’’ 

“He might haf peen her mother’s 
father, me laty.’’ 

“But you said father's father, in your 
song.’’ 

“She said Allister's father’s father, my 
laty, she pelieves.’’ 

“I can’t quite understand you, Mr. 
MacPhail.’’ 

“Well, you see, my laty, her father 
was out in the Forty-five and fought ta 
red-coats at Culloden. That’s his clay- 
more on ta wall there — a coot plade, 
though she’s not an Andrew Ferrara. 
She wass forched in Glenco py a cousin 
of her own, Angus py name, and she’s 
a ferry coot plade : she ’ll can well whistle 
ta pibroch of Ian Lorn apout ta ears of 
ta Sassenach. Her crandfather wass with 
his uncle in ta pattle of Killiecrankie 


after Tundee — a creat man, my laty, and 
he died there ; and so did her crand- 
uncle, for a fillain of a Mackay, from 
Lord Reay’s cursed country — where they 
aalways wass repels, my laty — chust as 
her uncle was pe cutting town ta wick- 
et Cheneral Mackay, turned him round, 
without gifing no warnings, and killed 
ta poor man at won plow.’’ 

“But what has it all to do with your 
name ? I declare I don’t know what to 
call you.’’ 

“Call her your own pard, oldTuncan 
MacPhail, my sweet laty, and haf ta pa- 
tience with her, and she’ll pe telling you 
aall apout eferything, only you must gif 
her olt prains time to tumple themselfs 
apout. Her head crows very stupid. — 
Yes, as she was saying, after ta ploody 
massacre at Culloden her father had to 
hide himself away out of sight, and to 
forge himself : I mean to put upon him- 
self a name that didn’t mean himself at 
aal. And my poor mother, who pored 
me — pig old Tuncan — ta ferry tay of ta 
pattle, would not be hearing won wort 
of him for tree months tat he was away ; 
and when he would pe creep pack like 
a fox to see her one fine night when ta 
moon was not pe up, they’ll make up an 
acreement to co away together for a time, 
and to call themselves MacPhails. But 
py and py they took their own nems 
acain.’‘ 

“And why haven’t you your own name 
now? I’m sure it’s a much prettier 
name.’’ 

“Because she’ll pe taking the other, 
my tear laty.’’ 

“And why ?’’ 

“Because — pecause — She will tell 
you another time. She’ll pe tired to 
talk more apout ta cursed Cawmills this 
ferry day.’’ 

“Then Malcolm’s name is not Mac- 
Phail either ?’’ 

“No, it is not, my laty.’’ 

“ Is he your son’s son or your daugh- 
ter’s sor^?’’ 

“Perhaps not, my laty.’’ 

“ I want to know what his real name 
is. Is it the same as yours ? It doesn’t 
seem respectable not to have your own 
names.’’ 


MALCOLM. 


“Oh yes, my laty, ferry respectable. 
Many coot men has to porrow nems of 
their neighpors. We’ve all cot our ferry 
own names, only in paad tays, my laty, 
we ton’t aalways know which they are 
exactly ; but we aal know which we are 
each other, and we get on ferry coot 
without the names. We lay them py 
with our Sappath clothes for a few tays, 
and they come out ta fresher and ta 
sweeter for keeping ta Sappath so long, 
my laty. And now she’ll pe playing 
you ta coronach of Clenco, which she 
was make herself for her own pipes.’’ 

“ I want to know first what Malcolm’s 
real name is,’’ persisted Lady Florimel. 

“Well, you see, my laty,’’ returned 
Duncan, “some peoples has names and 
does not know them ; and some people 
hasn’t names, and will pe supposing they 
haf.’’ 

“You are talking riddles, Mr. Mac- 
Phail, and I don’t like riddles,’’ said 
Lady Florimel, with an offence which 
was not altogether pretended. 

“Yes surely — oh, yes! Call her Tun- 
can MacPhail, and neither more nor less, 
my laty — not yet,’’ he returned, most 
evasively. 

“ I see you won’t trust me,’’ said the 
girl, and rising quickly she bade him 
good-night and left the cottage. 

Duncan sat silent for a few minutes, 
as if in distress; then slowly his hand 
went out feeling for his pipes, where- 
withal he consoled himself till bed-time. 

Having plumed herself upon her in- 
fluence with the old man, believing she 
could do anything with him she pleased. 
Lady Florimel was annoyed at failing to 
get from him any amplification of a 
hint in itself sufficient to cast a glow of 
romance about the youth who had al- 
ready interested her so much. Duncan 
also was displeased, but with himself for 
disappointing one he loved so much. 
With the passion ^r confidences which 
love generates, he had been for some 
time desirous of opening his mind to her 
upon the matter in question, a«i had in- 
deed, on this very occasion, intended to 
lead up to a certain disclosure, but just 
at the last he clung to his secret and 
could not let it go. 


119 

Compelled thereto against the natural 
impulse of the Celtic nature, which is 
open and confiding, therefore in the re- 
action cunning and suspicious, he had 
practiced reticence so long that he now 
recoiled from a breach of the habit which 
had become a second, false nature. He 
felt like one who having caught a bird 
holds it in his hand with the full inten- 
tion of letting it go, but cannot make up 
his mind to do it just yet, knowing that 
the moment he opens his hand nothing 
can make that bird his again. 

A whole week passed, during which 
Lady Florimel did not come near him, 
and the old man was miserable. At 
length one evening — for she chose her 
time when Malcolm must be in some 
vague spot between the shore and the 
horizon — she once more entered the 
piper’s cottage. He knew her step the 
moment she turned the corner from the 
shore, and she had scarcely set her foot 
across the threshold before he broke out : 
“ Ach, my tear laty, and did you’ll think 
old Tuncan such a stoopit old man as 
not to ’ll pe trusting ta light of her plind 
eyes ? Put her laty must forgif her, for 
it is a long tale, not like anything you’ll 
pe in ta way of peliefing ; and aalso it’ll 
pe but ta tassel to another Jong tale which 
tears ta pag of her heart, and makes her 
feel a purning tevil in ta pocket of her 
posom. Put she’ll tell you ta won half 
of it that pelongs to her poy Malcolm. 
He ’s a pig boy now, put he wasn’t aal- 
ways. No. He was once a ferry little 
smaal chylt, in her old plind arms. But 
they wasn’t old then. Why must young 
peoples crow old, my laty ? Put she’ll 
pe clad of it herself, for she’ll can hate 
ta petter.’’ 

Lady Florimel, incapable either of set- 
ting forth the advantages of growing old 
or of enforcing the duty — which is the 
necessity — of forgiveness, answered with 
some commonplace, and, as to fortify his 
powers of narration a sailor would cut 
himself a quid and a gentleman fill his 
glass or light a fresh cigar, Duncan slow- 
ly filled his bag. After a few strange 
notes, as of a spirit wandering in pain, 
he began his story. But I will tell the 
tale for him, lest the printed oddities of 


120 


MALCOLM. 


his pronunciation should prove weari- 
some. I must mention first, however, 
that he did not commence until he had 
secured a promise from Lady Florimel 
that she would not communicate his rev- 
elations to Malcolm, having, he said, 
very good reasons for desiring to make 
them himself so soon as a fitting time 
should have arrived. 

Avoiding all mention of his reasons 
either for assuming another name or for 
leaving his native glen, he told how, 
having wandered forth with no compan- 
ion but his bagpipes, and nothing he 
could call his own beyond the garments 
and weapons which he wore, he traversed 
the shires of Inverness and Nairn and 
Moray, offering at every house on his 
road to play the pipes or clean the lamps 
and candlesticks, and receiving sufficient 
return, mostly in the shape of food and 
shelter, but partly in money, to bring 
him all the way from Glenco to Portlos- 
sie. Somewhere near the latter was a 
cave in which his father, after his flight 
from Culloden, had lain in hiding for six 
months, in hunger and cold and in con- 
stant peril of discovery and death, all in 
that region being rebels, for as such Dun- 
can of course regarded the adherents of 
the houses of Orange and Hanover; and 
having occasion, for reasons, as I have 
said, unexplained, in his turn to seek, 
like a hunted stag, a place far from his 
beloved glen wherein to hide his head, 
he had set out to find the cave, which 
the memory of his father would render 
far more of a home to him now than any 
other place left him on earth. 

On his arrival at Portlossie he put up 
at a small public house in the Seaton, 
from which he started the next morning 
to find the cave — a somewhat hopeless 
-as well as perilous proceeding ; but his 
father’s description of its situation and 
•character had generated such a vivid 
.imagination of it in the mind of the old 
man that he believed himself able to 
walk straight into the mouth of it ; nor 
was the peril so great as must at first ap- 
pear, to one who had been blind all his 
life. But he searched the whole of the 
east side of the promontory of Scaur- 
nose, where it must lie, without finding 


such a cave as his father had depicted. 
Again and again he fancied he had come 
upon it, but was speedily convinced of 
his mistake. Even in one who had his 
eyesight, however, such a failure would 
not surprise those who understand how 
rapidly as well as constantly the whole 
faces of some cliffs are changing by the 
fall of portions — destroying the very ex- 
istence of some caves and utterly chang- 
ing the mouths of others. 

From a desire of secresy, occasioned 
by the haunting dread of its approach- 
ing necessity, day and night being other- 
wise much alike to him, Duncan gene- 
rally chose the night for his wanderings 
amongst the rocks and probings of their 
hollows. 

One night — or rather morning, for he 
believed it was considerably past twelve 
o’clock — he sat weary in a large open 
cave, listening to the sound of the rising 
tide, and fell fast asleep, his bagpipes, 
without which he never went abroad, 
across his knees. He came to himself 
with a violent start, for the bag seemed 
to be moving, and its last faint sound of 
wail was issuing. Heavens ! there was 
a baby lying upon it! For a time he sat 
perfectly bewildered, but at length con- 
cluded that some wandering gypsy had 
made him a too ready gift of the child 
she did not prize. Some one must be 
near. He called aloud, but there was no 
answer. The child began to cry. He 
sought to soothe it, and its lamentations 
ceased. The moment that its welcome 
silence responded to his blandishments, 
the still small “ Here I am ” of the Eter- 
nal Love whispered its presence in the 
heart of the lonely man : something lay 
in his arms so helpless that to it, poor 
and blind and forsaken of man and wo- 
man as he was, he was yet a tower of 
strength. He clasped the child to his 
bosom, and rising forthwith set out, but 
with warier’ steps th^n heretofore, over 
the rocks for the Seaton. 

Already he would have much pre- 
ferred concealing him lest he should be 
claimed — a thing, in view of all the cir- 
cumstances, not very likely — but for the 
child’s sake he must carry him to the 
“Salmon,” where he had free entrance 

X 


MALCOLM. 


121 


at any hour, not even the public-house 
locking its doors at night 

Thither then he bore his prize, shield- 
ing him from the night air as well as he 
could with the bag of his pipes. But he 
waked none of the inmates : lately fed, 
the infant slept for several hours, and 
then did his best both to rouse and as- 
tonish the neighborhood. 

Closely questioned, Duncan told the 
truth, but cunningly, in such manner 
that some disbelieved him altogether, 
while others, who had remarked his 
haunting of the rocks ever since his 
arrival, concluded he had brought the 
child with him, and had kept him hid- 
den until now. The popular conviction 
at length settled to this, that the child 
was the piper’s grandson, but base-born, 
whom therefore he was ashamed to ac- 
knowledge, although heartily willing to 
minister to and bring up as a foundling. 
The latter part of this conclusion, how- 
ever, was not alluded to by Duncan in 
his narrative : it was enough to add that 
he took care to leave the former part of 
it undisturbed. 

The very next day he found himself 
attacked by a low fever, but as he had 
hitherto paid for everything he had at 
the inn, they never thought of turning 
him out when his money was exhausted ; 
and as he had already by his discreet 
behavior and the pleasure his bagpipes 
afforded made himself not a few friends 
amongst the simple-hearted people of 
the Seaton, some of the benevolent in- 
habitants of the upper town. Miss Horn 
in particular, were soon interested in 
his favor, and supplied him with every- 
thing he required until his recovery. 
As to the baby, he was gloriously pro- 
vided for : he had at lea^t a dozen foster- 
mothers at once— no woman in the Seaton 
who could enter a claim founded on the 
possession of the special faculty required 
failing to enter that claim — with the re- 
sult of an amount of jealousy almost in- 
credible. 

Meantime, the town-drummer fell sick 
and died, and Miss Horn made a party 
in favor of Duncan. But for the baby I 
doubt if he would have had a chance, 
for he was a stranger and interloper : the 


women, however, with the baby in their « 
fore-front, carried the day. Then his 
opponents retreated behind the instru- 
ment, and strove hard to get the drum 
recognized as an essential of the office. 
When Duncan recoiled from the drum 
with indignation, but without losing the 
support of his party, the opposition had 
the effrontery to propose a bell : that he 
rejected with a vehemence of scorn that 
had nearly ruined his cause, and, assu- 
ming straightway the position of chief 
party in the proposed contract, declared 
that no noise of his making should be 
other than the noise of bagpipes ; that 
he would rather starve than beat drum 
or ring bell ; if he served in the case it 
must be after his own fashion ; and so 
on. Hence it was no wonder — some of 
the baillies being not only small men, 
and therefore conceited but powerful 
Whigs, who despised everything high- 
land, and the bagpipes especially — if the 
affair did for a while seem hopeless. 
But the more noble-minded of the au- 
thorities approved of the piper none the 
less for his independence — a generosity 
partly rooted, it must be confessed, in 
the amusement which the annoyance of 
their weaker brethren afforded them ; 
whom at last they were happily success- 
ful in outvoting, so that the bagpipes 
superseded the drum for a season. 

It may be asked whence it arose that 
Duncan should now be willing to quit his 
claim to any paternal property in Mal- 
colm, confessing that he was none of his 
blood. 

One source of the change was doubt- 
less the desire of confidences between 
himself and Lady Florimel ; another, 
the growing conviction, generated it may 
be by the admiration which is born of 
love, that the youth had gentle blood in 
his veins ; and a third, that Duncan had 
now so thoroughly proved the heart of 
Malcolm as to have no fear of any 
change of fortune ever alienating his 
affections or causing him to behave oth- 
erwise than as his dutiful grandson. 

It is not surprising that such a tale 
should have a considerable influence on 
Lady Florimel’s imagination : out of the 
scanty facts, which formed but a second 


122 


MALCOLM. 


volume, she began at once to construct 
both a first and a third. She dreamed of 
the young fisherman that night, and, re- 
flecting in the morning on her intercourse 
with him, recalled sufficient indications 
in him of superiority to his circumstances 
— noted by her now, however, for the 
first time — to justify her dream : he might 
indeed well be the lost scion of a noble 
family. 

I do not intend the least hint that she 
began to fall in love with>him. To bal- 
ance his good looks and the nobility — 
to keener eyes yet jjiore evident than 
to hers — in both his moral and physical 
carriage, the equally undeniable clown- 
ishness of his dialect and tone had huge 
weight, while the pecular straightforward- 
ness of his behavior and address not un- 
frequently savored in her eyes of rude- 
ness ; besides which objectionable things, 
there was the persistent odor of fish about 
his garments — in itself sufficient to pre- 
vent such a catastrophe. The sole re- 
sult of her meditations was the resolve 
to get some amusement out of him by 
means of a knowledge of his history 
superior to his own. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE REVIVAL. 

Before the close of the herring-fishing 
one of those movements of the spiritual 
waters which, in different forms and un- 
der different names, manifest themselves 
at various intervals of space and of time, 
was in full vortex. It was supposed by 
the folk of Portlossie to have begun in 
the village of Scaurnose, but by the time 
it was recognized as existent no one 
could tell whence it had come, any more 
than he could predict whither it was 
going. Of its spiritual origin it may be 
also predicated with confidence that its 
roots lay deeper than human insight 
could reach, and were far more inter- 
woven than human analysis could dis- 
entangle. 

One notable fact bearing on its nature 
was that it arose amongst the people 
themselves, without the intervention or 
immediate operation of the clergy, who 


indeed to a man were set against it. 
Hence the flood was at first free from 
the results of one influence most pro- 
lific of the pseudo-spiritual — namely, the 
convulsive efforts of men with faith in a 
certain evil system of theology to rouse 
a galvanic life by working on the higher 
feelings through the electric sympathies 
of large assemblies and the excitement 
of late hours, prolonged prayers and ex- 
hortations, and sometimes even direct 
appeal to individuals in public presence. 
The end of these things is death, for the 
reaction is toward spiritual hardness and 
a more confirmed unbelief : when the 
excitement has died away, those at least 
in whom the spiritual faculty is for the 
time exhausted, presume that they have 
tasted and seen, and found that nothing 
is there. The whole thing is closely al- 
lied to the absurdity of those who would 
throw down or who would accept the 
challenge to test the reality of answer to 
prayer by applying the force of a multi- 
tudinous petition to the will of the sup- 
posed divinity. I say supposed divinity, 
because a being whose will could be thus 
moved like a water-wheel could not be 
in any sense divine. If there might be 
a religious person so foolish and irrever- 
ent as to agree to such a test — crucial 
indeed, but in a far other sense than that 
imagined — I would put it to him whether 
the very sense of experiment would not 
destroy in his mind all faculty of prayer — 
placing him in the position no more of 
a son of God, but of one who, tempting 
the Lord his God, may read his rebuke 
where it stands recorded for the ages. 

But where such a movement has oriei- 
nated amongst the people, the very facts 
adduced to argue its falsehood from its 
vulgarity are to me so many indications 
on the other side ; for I could ill believe 
in a divine influence which did not take 
the person such as he was — did not, 
while giving him power from beyond 
him, leave his individuality uninjured, 
yea intensify it, subjecting the very means 
of its purification, the spread of the new 
leaven, to the laws of time and growth. 
To look at the thing from the other side, 
the genuineness of the man’s reception 
of it will be manifest in the meeting of 


MALCOLM. 


123 


his present conditions with the new thing 
— in the show of results natural to one 
of his degree of development. To hear 
a rude man utter his experience in the 
forms of cultivation would be at once to 
suspect the mere glitter of a reflex, and 
to doubt an illumination from within. 
I repeat, the genuine influence shows it- 
self such in showing that it has laid hold 
of the very man, at the very stage of 
growth he had reached. The dancing 
of David before the ark, the glow of 
Saint Stephen’s face, and the wild ges- 
tures and rude songs of miners and fish- 
ers and negroes, may all be signs of the 
presence of the same spirit in temples 
various. Children will rush and shout 
and halloo for the same joy which sends 
others of the family to weep apart. 

Of course the one infallible test as to 
whether any such movement is of man 
without God, or of God within the man, 
is the following life ; only a large space 
for fluctuation must be allowed where a 
whole world of passions and habits has 
to be subjected to the will of God through 
the vicegerency of a human will hardly 
or only just awakened, and as yet un- 
conscious of itself. 

The nearest Joseph Mair could come 
to the origin of the present movement 
was the influence of a certain Stornoway 
fisherman, whom they had brought back 
with them on their return from the coasts 
of Lewis — a man of Celtic fervor and 
faith, who had agreed to accompany 
them probably in the hope of serving 
a set of the bravest and hardest-working 
men in the world, who yet spent a large 
part of their ease in drinking up the 
earnings of fierce and perilous labor. 
There were a few amongst them, he 
found, already prepared to receive the 
word, and to each of these he spoke in 
private. They spoke to one another, 
then each to his friend outside the little 
circle. Next a few met to pray. These 
drew others in, and at length it was de- 
livered from mouth to mouth that on the 
following Sunday, at a certain early hour 
in the morning, a meeting would be held 
in the Baillie’s Barn, a cave large enough 
to receive all the grown population of 
Scaurnose. 


The news of this gathering of course 
reached the Seaton, where some were 
inclined to go and see, others to go and 
hear ; most of even the latter class, how- 
ever, being at the same time more than 
inclined to mock at the idea of a pop- 
ular religious assembly. 

Not so Duncan MacPhail, who, not- 
withstanding the ‘more than half-pagan 
character of his ideas, had too much 
reverence to mock at anything in the 
form of religion, to all the claims of 
which he was even eager to assent: 
when the duty of forgiveness was press- 
ed upon him too hard, he would take his 
last refuge in excepting to the authority 
of the messenger. He regarded the an- 
nouncement of the meeting with the 
greater respect that the man from Stor- 
noway was a MacLeod, and so of his 
mother’s clan. 

It was now the end of August, when 
the sky is of a paler blue in the day- 
time and greener about the sunset. The 
air had in it a touch of cold, which, like 
as a faint acid affects a sweet drink, only 
rendered the warmth more pleasant. On 
the appointed morning the tide was low 
and the waves died gently upon the sand, 
seeming to have crept away from the 
shore to get nearer to the sunrise. Dun- 
can was walking along the hard wet sand 
toward the promontory, with Mr. Gra- 
ham on one side of him and Malcolm on 
the other. There was no gun to fire this 
morning ; it was Sunday, and all might 
repose undisturbed : the longer sleep in 
bed, possibly the shorter in church. 

“ I wish you had your sight but for a 
moment, Mr. MacPhail,” said the school- 
master. ” How this sunrise would make 
you leap for joy !” 

‘‘ Ay !” said Malcolm, “ it wad gar dad- 
dy grip till ’s pipes in twa hurries.” 

‘‘And what should she’ll pe wanting 
her pipes for?” asked Duncan. 

‘‘To praise God wi’,” answered Mal- 
colm. 

‘‘Ay, ay,” murmured Duncan thought- 
fully. ‘‘ They are that.” 

‘‘What are they ?” asked Mr. Graham 
gently. 

‘‘For to praise God,” answered Dun- 
can solemnly. 


124 


MALCOLM. 


“ I almost envy you,” returned Mr. 
Graham, ‘‘when I think how you will 
praise God one day. What a glorious 
waking you will have !” 

‘‘Then it ’ll pe your opinion, Mr. Gra- 
ham, that she'll pe sleeping her sound 
sleep, and not pe lying wide awake in 
her coffin all ta time ?” 

‘‘A good deal better than that, Mr. 
MacPhail,” returned the schoolmaster 
cheerily. ‘‘ It’s my opinion that you are, 
as it were, asleep now, and that the mo- 
ment you die you will feel as if, you had 
just woke up, and for the first time in 
your life. For one thing, you will see 
far better then than any of us do now.” 

But poor Duncan could not catch the 
idea : his mind was filled with a prevent- 
ing fancy. ‘‘Yes ; I know — at ta tay of 
chutchment,” he said. ‘‘Put what ’ll pe 
ta use of ketting her eyes open pefore 
she ’ll pe up ? How should she pe see- 
ing with all ta earth apove her ; and ta 
cravestones too tat I know my poy Mal- 
colm will pe laying on ta top of his old 
crandfather to keep him warm, and let 
peoples pe know tat ta plind piper will 
pe lying town pelow wide awake and 
ferry uncomfortable ?” 

‘‘ Excuse me, Mr. MacPhail, but that’s 
all a mistake,” said Mr. Graham posi- 
tively. ‘‘ The body is but a sort of shell 
that we cast off when we die, as the corn 
casts off its husk when it begins to grow. 
The life of the seed comes up out of 
the earth in a new body, as Saint Paul 
says — ” 

‘‘ Then,” interrupted Duncan, ‘‘ she’ll pe 
crowing up out of her crave like a seed 
crowing up to pe a corn or a parley ?” 

The schoolmaster began to despair of 
ever conveying to the piper the idea that 
the living man is the seed sown, and that 
when the body of this seed dies, then the 
new body, with the man in it, springs 
alive out of the old one — that the death 
of the one is the birth of the other. Far 
more enlightened people than Duncan 
never imagine, and would find it hard 
to believe, that the sowing of the seed 
spoken of might mean something else 
than the burying of the body ; not per- 
ceiving what yet surely is plain enough, 
that that would be the sowing of a seed 


already dead and incapable of giving 
birth to anything whatever. 

‘‘No, no,” he said, almost impatiently, 
"you will never be in the grave : it is 
only your body that will go there, with 
nothing like life about it except the smile 
the glad soul has left on it. The poor 
body when thus forsaken, is so dead that 
it can’t even stop smiling. Get Malcolm 
to read to you out of the book of the 
Revelation how there were multitudes 
even then standing before the throne. 
They had died in this world, yet there 
they were, well and happy.” 

‘‘Oh yes,” said Duncan, with no small 
touch of spitefulness in his tone — ‘‘twang- 
twanging at teir fine colden herps ! She’ll 
not be thinking much of ta herp for a 
music -maker! And people tells her 
she’ll not pe hafing her pipes tere I Och 
hone 1 och hone 1 She’ll chust pe lying 
still and not pe ketting up, and when ta 
work is ofer and eferypody cone away, 
she’ll chust pe ketting up and taking a 
look apout her, to see if she’ll pe finding 
a stand o’ pipes that some coot highland- 
man has peen left pehint him when he 
died lately.” 

‘‘You’ll find it rather lonely, won’t 
you ?” 

‘‘Yes, no toubt, for they’ll aal pe cone 
up. Well, she’ll haf her pipes; and she 
could not CO where ta pipes was looked 
town upon by all ta creat people, and all 
ta smaal ones too.” 

They had now reached the foot of the 
promontory, and turned northward, each 
of his companions taking an arm of the 
piper to help him over the rocks that lay 
between them and the mouth of the cave, 
which soon yawned before them like a 
section of the mouth of a great fish. Its 
floor of smooth rock had been swept out 
clean and sprinkled with dry sea sand. 
There were many hollows and projec- 
tions along its sides rudely fit for serving 
as seats, to which had been added a 
number of forms extemporized of planks 
and thwarts. No one had yet arrived 
when they entered, and they went at 
once to the farther end of the cave, that 
Duncan, who was a little hard of hear- 
ing, might be close to the speakers. 
There his companions turned and look- 


MALCOLM. 


ed behind them: an exclamation, fol- 
lowed by a full glance at each other, 
broke from each. 

The sun, just clearing the end of the 
opposite promontory, shone right into 
the mouth of the cave fromij^he midst of 
a tumult of gold, in which all the other 
colors of his approach had been swallow- 
ed up. The triumph strode splendent 
over sea and shore, subduing waves and 
rocks to a path for its mighty entrance 
into that dark cave on the human coast. 

With his back to the light stood Dun- 
can in the bottom of the cave, his white 
hair gleaming argentine, as if his poor 
blind head were the very goal of the 
heavenly progress. He turned round. 
“Will it pe a fire ? She feels something 
warm on her head,” he said, rolling his 
sightless orbs, upon which the splendor 
broke waveless, casting a grim shadow 
of him on the jagged rock behind. 

“No,” answered Mr. Graham: “it is 
the sun you feel. He’s just out of his 
grave.” 

The old man gave a grunt. 

“ I often think,” said the schoolmaster 
to Malcolm, “that possibly the reason 
why we are told so little about the world 
we are going to is, that no description of 
it would enter our minds, any more than 
a description of that sunrise would carry 
a notion of its reality into the mind of 
your grandfather.” 

“ She’s obleeched to you, Mr. Graham !” 
said the piper with offence. “You take 
her ferry stupid. You’re so proud of your 
eyes, you think a plind man cannot see 
at aall. Chin !” 

But the folk began to assemble. By 
twos and threes, now from the one side, 
now from the other, they came dropping 
in, as if out of the rush of the blinding 
sunshine, till the seats were nearly filled, 
while a goodly company gathered about 
the mouth of the cave, there to await the 
arrival of those who had called the meet- 
ing. Presently MacLeod, a small thin 
man with iron-gray hair, keen, shrewd 
features, large head and brown complex- 
ion, appeared, and made his way to the 
farther end of the cave, followed by three 
or four of the men of Scaurnose, amongst 
whom walked a pale-faced consumptive 


125 

lad with bowed shoulders and eyes on 
the ground : he it was who, feebly clam- 
bering on a ledge of rock, proceeded to 
conduct the worship of the assembly. 
His parents were fisher-people of Scaur- 
nose, who to make a minister of him had 
been half starving the rest of their fam- 
ily, but he had broken down at length 
under the hardship of endless work and 
wretched food. From the close of the 
session in March he had been teaching 
in Aberdeen until a few days before, 
when he came home, aware that he was 
dying, and full of a fervor betraying 
anxiety concerning himself rather than 
indicating the possession of good news 
for others. The sun had now so far 
changed his position that, although he 
still shone into the cave, the preacher 
stood in the shadow, out of which gleam- 
ed his wasted countenance, pallid and 
sombre and solemn, as first he poured 
forth an abject prayer for mercy, con- 
ceived in the spirit of a slave supplicating 
the indulgence of a hard master, and 
couched in words and tones that bore 
not a trace of the filial ; then read the 
chapter containing the curses of Mount 
Ebal, and gave the congregation one of 
Duncan’s favorite psalms to sing, and at 
length began a sermon on what he call- 
ed the divine justice. Not one word 
was there in it, however, concerning 
God’s love of fair, dealing, either as be- 
twixt himself and man or as betwixt 
man and his fellow. The preacher’s 
whole notion of justice was the punish- 
ment of sin, and that punishment was 
hell and hell only ; so that the whole 
sermon was about hell from beginning 
to end — hell appalling, lurid, hopeless. 
And the eyes of all were fixed upon him 
with that glow from within which man- 
ifests the listening spirit. Some of the 
women were pale as himself from sympa- 
thetic horror, doubtless also from a vague 
stirring of the conscience, which, without 
accusing them of crime, yet told them 
that all was not right between them and 
their God; while the working of the 
faces of some of the men betrayed a 
mind not at all at ease concerning their 
prospects. It was an eloquent and pow- 
erful utterance, and might doubtless claim 


126 


MALCOLM. 


its place in the economy of human edu- 
cation ; but it was at best a pagan em- 
bodir.ient of truths such as a righteous 
pagan might have discovered, and breath- 
ed nothing of the spirit of Christianity, 
being as unjust toward God as it repre- 
sented him to be toward' men : the God 
of the preacher was utterly unlike the 
Father of Jesus. Urging his hearers to 
flee from the wrath to come, he drew such 
a picture of an angry Deity as in nothing 
resembled the revelation in the Son. 

“Fellow-sinners,” he said in conclu- 
sion, “ haste ye and flee from the wrath 
to come. Now is God waiting to be 
gracious, but only so long as his Son 
holds back the indignation ready to burst 
forth and devour you. He sprinkles its 
flames with the scarlet wool and the hys- 
sop of atonement. He stands between 
you and justice, and pleads with his in- 
censed Father for his rebellious creatures. 
Well for you that He so stands and so 
pleads ! Yet even He could not prevail 
for ever against such righteous anger, 
and it is but for a season He will thus 
entreat : the day will come when He 
will stand aside and let the fiery furnace 
break forth and slay you. Then, with 
howling and anguish, with weeping and 
wailing and gnashing of teeth, ye shall 
know that God is a God of justice, that 
his wrath is one with his omnipotence, 
and his hate everlasting as the fires of 
hell. But do as ye will, ye cannot thwart 
his decrees, for to whom He will He 
showeth mercy, and whom He will He 
hardeneth.” 

Scarcely had he ceased when a loud 
cry, clear and keen, rang through every 
corner of the cave. Well might the 
preacher start and gaze around him, for 
the cry was articulate, sharply modeled 
into the three words — “Father o’ lichts!” 
Some of the men gave a scared groan, 
and*some of the women shrieked. None 
could tell whence the cry had come, and 
Malcolm alone could guess who must 
have uttered it. 

“Yes,” said the preacher, recovering 
himself and replying to the voice, “ He 
is the Father of lights, but only to them 
that are in Christ Jesus : He is no Father, 
but an avenging Deity, to them over 


whom the robe of his imputed righteous- 
ness is not cast. Jesus Christ himself 
will not be gracious for ever. Kiss ye 
the Son, lest even He be angry, and ye 
perish from the way when his wrath is 
kindled but a little.” 

“Father o’ lichts!” rang the cry again, 
and louder than before. 

To Malcolm it seemed close behind 
him, but he had the self-possession not 
to turn his head. The preacher took no 
further notice. MacLeod stood up, and 
having, in a few simple remarks, at- 
tempted to smooth some of the asperi- 
ties of the youth’s address, announced 
another meeting in the evening, and dis- 
missed the assembly with prayer. 

Malcolm went home with his grand- 
father. He was certain it was the laird’s 
voice he had heard, but he would at- 
tempt no search after his refuge that day, 
for dread of leading to its discovery by 
others. 

That evening most of the boats of the 
Seaton set out for the fishing-ground as 
usual, but not many went from Scaur- 
nose. Blue Peter would go no more of 
a Sunday, hence Malcolm was free for 
the night, and again with his grandfather 
walked along the sands in the evening 
toward the cave. 

The sun was going down on the other 
side of the promontory before them, and 
the sky was gorgeous in rose and blue, 
in peach and violet, in purple and green, 
barred and fretted, heaped and broken, 
scattered and massed — every color edged 
and tinged and harmonized with a glory 
as of gold molten with heat and glow- 
ing with fire. The thought that his 
grandfather could not see and had never 
seen such splendor made Malcolm sad, 
and very little was spoken between them 
as they went. 

When they arrived the service had al- 
ready commenced, but room was made 
for them to pass, and a seat was found 
for Duncan where he could hear. Just 
as they entered, Malcolm spied, amongst 
those who preferred the open air at the 
mouth of the cavern, a face which he 
was all but certain was that of one of 
the three men from whom he had res- 
cued the laird. 


MALCOLM. 


127 


MacLeod was to address them. He 
took for his text the words of the Sa- 
viour, “ Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest,” and founded upon them a simple, 
gracious and all but eloquent discourse, 
very different in tone and influence from 
that of the young student. It must be 
confessed that the Christ he presented 
was very far off, and wrapped in a hazy 
nimbus of abstraction — that the toil of 
his revelation was forgotten, the life He 
lived being only alluded to, and that not 
for the sake of showing what He was, 
and hence what God is, but to illustrate 
the conclusions of men concerning him ; 
and yet there was that heart of reality in 
the whole thing which no moral vulgarity 
of theory, no injustice toward God, no 
tyranny of stupid logic over childlike in- 
tuitions, could so obscure as to render it 
inoperative. From the form of the Son 
of Man, thus beheld from afar, came a 
warmth like the warmth from the first 
approach of the far-off sun in spring, suf- 
ficing to rouse the earth from the sleep 
of winter in which all the time the same 
sun has been its warmth, and has kept 
it from sleeping unto death. 

MacLeod was a thinker, aware of the 
movements of his own heart, and able to 
reflect on others the movements of their 
hearts; hence, although in the main he 
treated the weariness and oppression 
from which Jesus offered to set them free 
as arising from a sense of guilt and the 
fear of coming misery, he could not help 
alluding to more ordinary troubles and 
depicting other phases of the heart’s rest- 
lessness with such truth and sympathy 
that many listened with a vague feeling 
of exposure to a supernatural insight. 
The sermon soon began to show its in- 
fluence, for a sense of the need of help 
is so present to every simple mind that, 
of all messages, the offer of help is of 
easiest reception : some of the women 
were sobbing, and the silent tears were 
flowing down the faces of others ; while 
of the men many were looking grave 
and thoughtful, and kept their eyes fixed 
on the speaker. At length, toward the 
close, MacLeod judged it needful to give 
a word of warning. 


” But, my friends,” he said — and his 
voice grew low and solemn — ‘T dare not 
make an end without reminding you that 
if you stop your ears against the gracious 
call a day will come when not even the 
merits of the Son of God will avail you, 
but the wrath of the — ” 

Father o' lichts !" once more burst 
ringing out, like the sudden cry of a 
trumpet in the night. 

MacLeod took no notice of it, but 
brought his sermon at once to a close, 
and specified the night of the following 
Saturday for the next meeting. They 
sung a psalm, and after a slow, solemn, 
thoughtful prayer the congregation dis- 
persed. 

But Malcolm, who, anxious because 
of the face he had seen as he entered, 
had been laying his plans, after begging 
his grandfather in a whisper to go home 
without him, for a reason he would af- 
terward explain, withdrew into a recess 
whence he could watch the cave with- 
out being readily discovered. 

Scarcely had the last voices of the re- 
treating congregation died away when 
the same ill-favored face peeped round 
the corner of the entrance, gave a quick 
glance about, and the man came in. 
Like a snuffing terrier he went peering 
in the dimness into every hollow and be- 
hind every projection, until he suddenly 
caught sight of Malcolm, probably by a 
glimmering of his eyes. 

“Hillo, Humpy!” he cried in atone 
of exultation, and sprang up the rough 
ascent of a step or two to where he sat. 

Malcolm half rose, and met him with 
a well-delivered blow between the eyes. 
He fell, and lay for a moment stunned. 
Malcolm ^at down again and watched 
him. When he came to himself he crept 
out, muttering imprecations. He knew 
it was not Humpy who dealt the blow. 

As soon as he was gone Malcolm in 
his turn began searching. He thought 
he knew every hole and corner of the 
cave, and there was but one where the 
laird — who, for as near him as he heard 
his voice the first time, certainly had 
not formed one of the visible congrega- 
tion — might have concealed himself: if 
that was his covert, there he must be 


128 


MALCOLM. 


still, for he had assuredly not issued 
from it. 

Immediately behind where he sat in 
the morning was a projection of rock, 
with a narrow cleft between it and the 
wall of the cavern, visible only from the 
very back of the cave, where the roof 
came down low. But when he thought 
of it he saw that even here he could not^ 
have been hidden in the full light of the 
morning from the eyes of some urchins 
who had seated themselves as far back 
as the roof would allow them, and they 
had never looked as if they saw any- 
thing more than other people. Still, if 
he was to search at all, here he must be- 
gin. 'The cleft had scarcely more width 
than sufficed to admit his body, and his 
hands told him at once that there was 
no laird there. Could there be any 
opening farther? If there was, it could 
only be somewhere above. Was ad- 
vance in that direction possible ? 

He felt about, and, finding two or 
three footholds, began to climb in the 
dark, and had reached the height of six 
feet or so when he came to a horizontal 
projection, which for a moment only 
barred his farther progress. Having lit- 
erally surmounted this — that is, got on 
the top of it — he found there a narrow 
vertical opening : was it but a shallow 
recess, or did it lead into the heart of the 
rock? 

Carefully feeling his way both with 
hands and feet, he advanced a step or 
two, and came to a place where the pas- 
sage widened a little, and then took a 
sharp turn and became so narrow that 
it v’as with difficulty he forced himself 
through. It was, however, but one close 
pinch, and he found himself,*as his feet 
told him, at the top of a steep descent. 
He stood for a moment hesitating, for 
prudence demanded a light. The sound 
of the sea was behind him, but all in 
front was still as the darkness of the 
grave. Suddenly up from unknown 
depths of gloom came the tones of a 
sweet childish voice singing “The Lord’s 
my Shepherd.’’ 

Malcolm waited until the psalm was 
finished, and then called out, “ Mr. Stew- 
art ! I’m here — Malcolm. MacPhail. I 


want to see ye. Tell him it’s me, 
Phemy.’’ 

A brief pause followed ; then Phemy’s 
voice answered, “ Come awa’ doon. He 
says ye s’ be welcome.’’ 

“ Canna ye shaw a licht, than, for I 
dinna ken a fit o’ the ro’d ?’’ said Mal- 
colm. 

The next moment a light appeared at 
some little distance below, and presently 
began to ascend, borne by Phemy, to- 
ward the place where he stood. She 
took him by the hand without a word 
and led him down a slope, apparently 
formed of material fallen from the roof, 
to the cave already described. The mo- 
ment he entered it he marked the water 
in its side, the smooth floor, the walls 
hollowed into a thousand fantastic cav- 
ities, and knew he had come upon the 
cave in which his great-grandfather had 
found refuge so many years before. 
Changes in its mouth had rendered en- 
trance difficult, and it had slipped by 
degrees from the knowledge of men. 

At the bottom of the slope, by the side 
of the well, sat the laird. Phemy set the 
little lantern she carried on its edge. The 
laird rose and shook hands with Mal- 
colm, and asked him to be seated. 

“ I’m sorry to say they’re efter ye 
again, laird,’’ said Malcolm after a little 
ordinary chat. 

Mr. Stewart was on his feet instantly. 
“I maun awa’. Tak care o’ Phemy,’’ 
he said hurriedly. 

“Na, na, sir,’’ said Malcolm, laying 
his hand on his arm; “there’s nae sic 
hurry. As lang’s I’m here ye may sit 
still ; an’, as far’s I ken, nobody’s fun’ 
the w’y in but mysel’, an’ that was yei 
ain wyte [blame], laird. But ye hae 
garred mair fowk nor me luik, an’ that's 
the pity o’ ’t.’’ 

“ I tauld ye, sir, ye sudna cry oot,’’ 
said Phemy. 

“ I couldna help it,’’ said Stewart apolo- 
getically. 

“Weel, ye sudna ha’ gane near them 
again,’’ persisted the little woman. 

“ Wha kent but they kent whaur I cam 
frae ?’’ also persisted the laird. 

“ Sit ye doon, sir, an’ lat’s hae a word 
aboot it,’’ said Malcolm cheerily. 


MALCOLM. 


129 


The laird cast a doubting look at 
Phemy. 

“Ay, sit doon,” said Phemy. 

Mr. Stewart yielded, but nervous starts 
and sudden twitches of the muscles be- 
trayed his uneasiness : it looked as if his 
body would jump up and run without 
his mind’s consent. 

“ Hae ye ony w’y o’ winnin’ oot o’ this, 
forbye [besides) the mou’ o’ the cave 
there ?’’ asked Malcolm. 

“ Nane ’at I ken 0’,’’ answered Phemy. 
“But there’s heaps o’ hidy-holes i’ the 
inside o’ ’t.’’ 

“That’s a’ verra weel, but gien they 
keepit the mou’, an’ took their time till 
’t, they bude to grip ye.’’ 

“There 77 iay be, though,’’ resumed 
Phemy. “It gangs back a lang road. 
I hae never been in sicht o’ the en’ o’ ’t. 
It comes doon verra laich in some places, 
and gangs up heich again in ithers, but 
no sign o’ an en’ till ’t.’’ 

“ Is there ony soon’ o’ watter intill ’t ?’’ 
asked Malcolm. 

“ Na, nane ’at ever I hard. But I’ll tell 
ye what I hae hard : I hae hard the flails 
gaein’ thud, thud, abune my heid.’’ 

“Hoot toot, Phemy!’’ said Malcolm: 
“we’re a guid mile an’ a half frae the 
nearest ferm-toon, an’ that, I reckon, ’ll 
be the Hoose-ferm.’’ 

“ I canna help that,’’ persisted Phemy. 
“Gien ’t wasna the flails, whiles ane, an’ 
whiles twa, I dinna ken what it cud hae 
been. Hoo far it was, I canna say, for 
it’s ill measurin’ i’ the dark, or wi’ nae- 
thing but a bowat [laTiterTi) i’ yer han’ ; 
but gien ye ca’d it mair, I wadna won’er,’’ 

“ It’s a michty howkin !’’ said Malcolm, 
“but for a’ that it wadna baud ye frae the 
grip o’ thae scoonrels : whaurever ye ran 
they cud rin efter ye.’’ 

“I think we cud sort them,’’ said 
Phemy. “There’s ae place, a guid bit 
farrer in, whaur the rufe comes doon to 
the flure, leavin’ jist ae sma’ hole to creep 
throu’ : it wad be fine to hae a gey muckle 
stane handy, jist to row (/'<?//) athort it, 
an’ gar’t luik as gien ’t was the en’ o’ 
a’thing. But the hole’s sae sma’ at the 
laird has ill gettin’ his puir back throu’ ’t.’’ 

“I couldna help won’erin’thoo he wan 
throu’ at the tap there,’’ said Malcolm. 

9 


At this the laird laughed almost mer- 
rily, and rising took Malcolm by the 
hand and led him to the spot, where he 
made him feel a rough groove in the 
wall of the rocky strait : into this hollow 
he laid his hump, and so slid sideways 
through. 

Malcolm squeezed himself through 
after him, saying, “Noo ye’re oot, laird, 
hadna ye better come wi’ me hame to 
Miss Horn’s, whaur ye wad be as safe’s 
gien ye war in h’aven itsel’ ?’’ 

“Na, I canna gang to Miss Horn’s,’’ 
he replied. 

“ What for no, laird ?’’ 

Pulling Malcolm down toward him, the 
laird whispered in his ear, “’Cause she’s 
fleyt at my back.’’ 

A moment or two passed ere Malcolm 
could think of a reply both true and fit- 
ting. When at length he spoke again 
there was no answer, and he knew that 
he was alone. 

He left the cave and set out for the 
Seaton ; but, unable to feel at peace 
about his friends, resolved on the way to 
return after seeing his grandfather, and 
spend the night in the outer cave. 


CHAPTER xxxr. 

WANDERING STARS. 

He had not been gone many minutes 
when the laird passed once more through 
the strait, and stood a moment waiting 
for Phemy : she had persuaded him to 
go home to her father’s for the night. 
But the next instant he darted back, with 
trembling hands caught hold of Phemy, 
who was following him with the lantern, 
and stammered in her ear, “There’s 
somebody there 1 I dinna ken whaur 
they come frae.’’ 

Phemy went to the front of the pas- 
sage and listened, but could hear noth- 
ing, and returned. “Bide ye whaur ye 
are, laird,’’ she said: “I’ll gang doon, 
an’ gien I hear or see naething I’ll come 
back for ye.’’ 

With careful descent, placing her feet 
on the well-known points unerringly, she 
reached the bottom, and peeped into the 
outer cave. The place was quite dark. 


130 


MALCOLM. 


Through its jaws the sea glimmered faint 
in the low light that skirted the northern 
horizon, and the slow pulse of the tide 
upon the rocks was the sole sound to be 
heard. No : another in the cave close 
beside her — one small solitary noise, as 
of shingle yielding under the pressure 
of a standing foot.. She held her breath 
and listened, her heart beating so loud 
that she feared it would deafen her to 
what would come next. A good many 
minutes, half an hour it seemed to her, 
passed, during which she heard nothing 
more ; but as she peeped out for the 
twentieth time a figure glided into the 
field of vision bounded by the cave’s 
mouth. It was that of a dumpy woman. 
She entered the cave, tumbled over one 
of the forms, and gave a loud cry, coupled 
with an imprecation. “The deevil roast 
them ’at laid me sic a trap!” she said. 
“I hae broken the shins the auld markis 
laudit.” 

“Hold your wicked tongue!” hissed a 
voice in return, almost in Phemy’s very 
ear. 

“Ow! ye ’re there, are ye, mem ?” re- 
joined the other, in a voice that held in- 
ternal communication with her wounded 
shins. “Coupit ye the crans like me?” 

The question, Englished, was, “ Did 
you fall heels over head like me ?” but 
was capable of a metaphorical interpre- 
. tation as well. 

“ Hold your tongue, I say, woman ! 
Who knows but some of the saints may 
be at their prayers within hearing?” 

“Na, na, mem, there’s nae risk o’ that. 
This is no ane o’ yer creepy caves whaur 
(,otters an’ wullcats hae their habitations: 
■it’s a muckle open-mou’d place, like 
■»them ’at prays intill ’it — as toom an’ 
clear-sidit as a tongueless bell. But 
what for ye wad hae ’s come here to oor 
cracks {conversatio7i) I canna faddom. 
A body wad think ye had an ill thoucht 
i’ yer heid — eh, mem ?” 

The suggestion was followed by a low, 
almost sneering laugh. As she spoke 
the sounds of her voice and step had 
been advancing with cautious intermit- 
tent approach. 

“I hae ye noo,” she said, as she seated 
.herself at length beside the other. “The 


gowk, Geordie Bray!” she went on — “to 
tak it intill’s oogly heid ’at the cratur 
wad be hurklin’ here ! It’s no the place 
for ane ’at has to hide ’s heid for verra 
shame o’ slippin’ aff the likes o’ himseP 
upo’ sic a braw mither. Could he get 
nae ither door to win in at, haith?” 

“Woman, you’ll drive me mad!” said 
the other. 

“Weel, hinney,” returned the former, 
suddenly changing her tone, “ I’m mair 
an’ mair convenced ’at yon’s the verra 
laad for yer purpose. For ae thing, ye 
see, nobody kens whaur he cam frae, as 
the laird, bonny laad ! wad say, an’ no- 
body can contradick a word — the auld 
man less than onybody, for I can tell 
him what he kens to be trowth. Only I 
winna muv till I ken whaur he comes 
frae.” 

“Wouldn’t you prefer not knowing for 
certain ? You could swear \f!th the bet- 
ter grace.” 

“Deil a bit! It maitters na to me 
whilk side o’ my teeth I chow wi’. But 
I winna sweir till I ken the trowth, ’at 
I may baud aff o’ ’t. He’s the man, 
though, gien we can get a grip o’ ’m. 
He luiks the richt thing, ye see, mem. 
He has a glisk [slight look) o’ the mar- 
kis tu — divna ye think, mem ?” 

“ Insolent wretch !” 

“ Caw canny, mem. A’ thing maun be 
considered. It wad but gar the thing 
luik the mair likly. Fowk gangs the 
len’th o’ sayin’ ’at Humpy himsel’ ’s no 
the sin [son) o’ the auld laird, honest 
man !” 

“ It’s a wicked lie !” burst with indig- 
nation from the other. 

“There may be waur things nor a bit 
lee. Ony gait, ae thing’s easy priven : 
ye lay verra dowie [poorly) for a month 
or sax ooks ance upon a time at Lossie 
Hoose, an’ that was a feow years — we 
needna speir hoo mony — efter ye was 
lichtened o’ the tither. Whan they hear 
that at that time ye gae birth till a lad- 
bairn, the whilk was stown awa’, an’ 
never hard tell o’ till noo, ‘ It may weel 
be,’ fowk’ll say: ‘them ’at has drunk 
wad drink again.’ It wad affoord riz- 
zons, ye see, an’ guid anes, for the bairn 
bein’ putten oot o’ sicht, and wad mak 


MALCOLM. 


the haill story mair nor likly i’ the jeedg- 
ment o’ a’ ’at hard it.” 

“You scandalous woman ! That would 
be to confess to all the world that he was 
not the son of my late husband.” 

“ They say that o’ him ’at is, an’ hoo 
muckle the waur are ye ? Lat them say 
’at they like, sae lang ’s we can shaw ’at 
he cam o’ your body, an’ was born i’ 
wedlock ? Ye hae yer Ian’s ance mair, 
for ye hae a sin ’at can guide them ; and 
ye can guide him. He’s a bonny dad — 
bonny eneuch to be yer leddyship’s, and 
his lordship’s — an’ sae, as I was remark- 
in’, i’ the jeedgment o’ ill-thouchtit fowk, 
the mair likly to be heir to auld Stewart 
o’ Kirkbyres.” 

She laughed huskily. 

“ But I maun hae a scart o’ yer pen, 
mem, afore I wag tongue about it,” she 
went on. “ I ken brawly hoo to set it 
gauin’ : I ^nna be the first to ring the 
bell. Na, na ; I s’ set Miss Horn’s Jean 
jawin’, an’ it ’ll be a’ ower the toon in a 
jiffy — at first in a kin’ o’ a sough ’at 
naebody ’ill unnerstan’, but it ’ll grow 
looder an’ plainer. At the lang last it 
’ill come to yer leddyship’s bearin’ ; an’ 
syne ye hae me taen up an’ questioned 
afore a justice o’ the peace, that there 
may be no luik o’ any compack atween 
the twa o’ ’s. But, as I said afore. I’ll 
no muv till I ken a’ aboot the lad first, 
an’ syne get a scart o’ your pen, mem.” 

“You must be the devil himself!” said 
the other, in a tone that was not of dis- 
pleasure. 

“ 1 hae been tellt that afore, an’ wi’ 
less rizzon,” was the reply, given also in 
a tone that was not of displeasure. 

“ But what if we should be found out ?” 

“Ye can lay ’t a’ upo’ me.” 

‘‘And what will you do with it?” 

“Tak it wi’ me,” was the answer, ac- 
companied by another husky laugh. 

‘‘ Where to ?” 

“Speir nae questons an’ ye’ll be tellt 
nae lees. Ony gait, I s’ lea’ nae track 
ahin’ me. An’ for that same sake, I 
maun hae my pairt i’ my han’ the meen- 
ute the thing’s been sworn till. Gien ye 
fail me, ye’ll sune see me get mair licht 
upo’ the subjec’. an’ confess till a great 
mistak. By the Michty, but I’ll sweir 


131 

the verra contrar the neist time I’m hed 
up I Ay, an’ ilka body ’ill believe me. 
An’ whaur’ll ye be than, my leddy? 
For though / micht mistak, ye cudna. 
Faith ! they’ll hae ye ta’en up for per- 
jury.” 

“You’re a dangerous accomplice,” said 
the lady. 

“ I’m a tule ye maun tak by the han’le 
or ye’ll rue the edge,” returned the other 
quietly. 

“As soon, then, as I get a hold of that 
misbegotten elf — ” 

‘‘ Mean ye the yoong laird or the 
yoong markis, mem ?” 

“You forget, Mrs. Catanach, that you 
are speaking to a lady.” 

“Ye maun hae been unco like ane ae 
nicht, ony gait, mem. But I’m dune wi’ 
my jokin’.” 

“As soon, I say, as I get my poor boy 
into proper hands, I shall be ready to 
take the next step.” 

“What for sud ye pit it aff till than? 
He canna du muckle ae w’y or ither.” 

“ I will tell you. His uncle. Sir Joseph, 
prides himself on being an honest man, 
and if some busybody were to tell him 
that poor Stephen, as I am told people 
are saying, was no worse than harsh 
treatment had made him — for you know 
his father could not bear the sight of 
him to the day of his death — he would 
be the more determined to assert his 
guardianship and keep things out of my 
hands. But if I once had the poor fel- 
low in an asylum, or in my own keep- 
ing, you see — ” 

“Weel, mem, gien I be potty, ye’re 
panny,” exclaimed the midwife with her 
gelatinous laugh. “ Losh, mem I” she 
burst out after a moment’s pause, “gien 
you an’ me was to fa’ oot, there wad be 
a stramash I He! he! he!” 

They rose and left the cave together, 
talking as they went, and Phemy, trem- 
bling all over, rejoined the laird. 

She could understand little of what 
she had heard, and yet, enabled by her 
affection, retained in her mind a good 
deal of it. After events brought more 
of it to her recollection, and what I have 
here given is an attempted restoration 
of the broken mosaic. She rightly 


I 


MALCOLM. 


132 

judged it better to repeat nothing of 
what she had overheard to the laird, to 
whom it would only redouble terror; and 
when he questioned her in his own way 
concerning it, she had little difficulty, so 
entirely did he trust her, in satisfying 
him with a very small amount of infor- 
mation. When they reached her home 
she told all she could to her father ; 
whose opinion it was that the best, in- 
deed the only, thing they could do was 
to keep, if possible, a yet more vigilant 
guard over the laird and his liberty. 

Soon after they were gone Malcolm 
returned, and, little thinking that there 
was no one left to guard, chose a shelter- 
ed spot in the cave, carried thither a 
quantity of dry sand, and lay down to 
sleep, covered with his tarpaulin coat. 
He found it something chilly, however, 
and did not rest so well but that he woke 
with the first break of day. 

The morning, as it drew slowly on, 
was a strange contrast, in its gray and 
saffron, to the gorgeous sunset of the 
night before. The sea crept up on the 
l^nd as if it were weary and did not 
care much to flow any more. Not a 
breath of wind was in motion, and yet 
the air even on the shore seemed full 
of the presence of decaying leaves and 
damp earth. He sat down in the mouth 
of the cave, and looked out on the still, 
half-waking world of ocean and sky be- 
fore him — a leaden ocean and a dull, 
misty sky ; and as he gazed a sadness 
came stealing over him, and a sense of 
the endlessness of labor — labor ever re- 
turning on itself and making no progress. 
The mad laird was always lamenting his 
ignorance of his origin : Malcolm thought 
he knew whence he came ; and yet what 
was the much good of life ? Where was 
the end to it all ? People so seldom got 
what they desired ! To be sure, his life 
was a happy one, or had been, but there 
was the poor laird. Why should he be 
happier than the laird ? Why should the 


laird have a hump and he have none ? 
If all the world were happy but one 
man, that one’s misery would be as a 
cairn on which the countless multitudes 
of the blessed must heap the stones of 
endless questions and enduring perplex- 
ities. 

It is one thing to know from whom we 
come, and another to know Him from 
whom we come. 

Then his thoughts turned to Lady 
Florimel. All the splendors of existence 
radiated from her, but to the glory he 
could never draw nearer ; the celestial 
fires of the rainbow fountain of her life 
could never warm him ; she cared about 
nothing he cared about; if they had a 
common humanity they could not share 
it ; to her he was hardly human. If he 
were to unfold before her the deepest 
layers of his thought, she would look at 
them curiously, as she miglil watch the 
doings of an ant or a spider. Had he 
no right to look for more ? He did not 
know, and sat brooding with bowed 
head. 

Unseen from where he sat, the sun 
drew nearer the horizon ; the light grew ; 
the tide began to ripple up more diligent- 
ly ; a glimmer of dawn touched even the 
brown rock in the farthest end of the 
cave. 

Where there was light there was work, 
and where there was work for any one 
there was at least justification of his ex- 
istence. That work must be done if it 
should return and return in a never- 
broken circle. Its theory could wait. 
For indeed the only hope of finding the 
theory of all theories, the Divine idea, 
lay in the going on of things. 

In the mean time, while God took care 
of the sparrows by himself, he allowed 
Malcolm a share in the protection of a 
human heart capable of the keenest suf- 
fering — that of the mad laird. 



-VZI, 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE skipper’s CHAMBER. 

O NE day toward the close of the fish- 
ing-season the marquis called upon 
Duncan, and was received with a cor- 
dial, unembarrassed welcome. 

“ I want you, Mr. MacPhail,” said his 
lordship, “to come and live in that little 
cottage on the banks of the burn, which 
one of the under-gamekeepers, they tell 
me, used to occupy. I’ll have it put in 
order for you, and you shall live rent- 
free as my piper.” 

“ I thank your lortship’s grace,” said 
Duncan, “ 2 fnd she would pe proud of ta 
honor, put it ’ll pe too far away from ta 
shore for her poy’s fishing.” 

“ I have a design upon him too,” re- 
turned the marquis. “They’re building 
a little yacht for me — a pleasure-boat, 
you understand — at Aberdeen, and I 
want Malcolm to be skipper. But he is 
such a useful fellow, and so thoroughly 
to be depended upon, that I should pre- 
fer his having a room in the house. I 
should like to know he was within call 
any moment I might want him.” 

Duncan did not clutch at the proposal. 
He was silent so long that the marquis 
spoke again. 

“You do not quite seem to like the 
plan, Mr. MacPhail,” he said. 

“ If aall wass here as it used to wass 
in ta Highlants, my lort,” said Duncan, 
“when every clansman wass son or 
prother or father to his chief, tat would 
pe tifferent ; put my poy must 7tot co and 
eat with serfants who haf nothing put 
teir waches to make tern love and opey 
your lortship. If her poy serfs another 
man, it must pe pecause he loves him, 
and looks upon 'him as his chief, who 
will shake hands with him and take ta 
father’s care of him ; and her poy must 
tie for him when ta time comes.” 

Even a feudal lord cannot be expected 
to have sympathized with such grand 


patriarchal ideas; they were much too 
like those of the kingdom of heaven ; 
and feudalism itself had by this time 
crumbled away — not indeed into month- 
ly, but into half - yearly, wages. The 
marquis, notwithstanding, was touched 
by the old man’s words, matter-of-fact 
as his reply must sound after them. 

“ I would make any arrangements you 
or he might wish,” he said. “ He should 
take his meals with Mrs. Courthope, 
have a bedroom to himself, and be re- 
quired only to look after the yacht, and 
now and then do some bit of business I 
couldn’t trust any one else with.” 

The highlander’s pride was nearly 
satisfied. 

“ So.” he said, “ it ’ll be his own hench- 
man my lort will pe making of her poy ?” 

“ Something like that. We’ll see how 
it goes. If he doesn’t like it, he can drop 
it. It’s more that I want to have him 
about me than anything else. I want to 
do something for him when I have a 
chance. I like him.” 

“ My lort will pe toing ta laad a creat 
honor,” said Duncan. “ Put,” he added, 
with a sigh, “ she’ll be lonely, her nain- 
sel.” 

“He can come and see you twenty 
times a day, and stop all night when 
you particularly want him. We’ll see 
about some respectable woman to look 
after the house for you.” 

“ She’ll haf no womans to look after 
her,” said Duncan fiercely. 

“ Oh, very well. Of course not, if you 
don’t wish it,” returned the marquis, 
laughing. 

But Duncan did not even smile in re- 
turn. He sat thoughtful and silent for 
a moment, then said, “And what’ll pe- 
come of her lamps and her shop ?” 

“You shall have all the lamps and 
candlesticks in the house to attend to 
and take charge of,” said the marquis, 
who had heard of the old man’s whim 

133 


134 


MALCOLM, 


from Lady Florimel ; " and for the shop, 
yoii won’t want that when you ’re piper 
to the marquis of Lossie.” 

He did not venture to allude to wages 
more definitely. 

“Well, she ’ll pe talking to her poy 
apout it,’’ said Duncan ; and the marquis 
saw that he had better press the matter 
no further for the time. 

To Malcolm the proposal was full of 
attraction. True, Lord Lossie had once 
and again spoken so as to offend him, 
but the confidence he had shown in him 
had gone far to atone for that. And to 
be near Lady Florimel ! — to have to wait 
on her in the yacht, and sometimes in 
the house ! — to be allowed books from 
the library perhaps ! — to have a nice 
room and those lovely grounds all about 
him ! It was tempting ! 

The old man also, the more he reflect- 
ed, liked the idea the more. The only 
thing he murmured at was being parted 
from his grandson at night. In vain 
Malcolm reminded him that during the 
fishing-season he had to spend most 
nights alone : Duncan answered that he 
had but to go to the door and look out 
to sea, and there was nothing between 
him and his boy, but now he could not 
tell how many stone walls might be 
standing up to divide them. He was 
quite willing to make the trial, however, 
and see if he could bear it. So Malcolm 
went to speak to the marquis. 

He did not altogether trust the mar- 
quis, but he had always taken a delight 
in doing anything for anybody — a de- 
light rooted in a natural tendency to 
ministration, unusually strong, and spe- 
cially developed by the instructions of 
Alexander Graham, conjoined with the 
necessities of his blind grandfather ; 
while there was an alluring something, 
it must be confessed, in the marquis’s 
high position, which let no one set down 
to Malcolm’s discredit : whether the sub- 
ordination of class shall go to the develop- 
ment of reverence or of servility depends 
mainly on the individual nature subor- 
dinated. Calvinism itself has produced 
as loving children as abject slaves, with 
a good many between partaking of the 
character of both kinds. Still, as he 


pondered over the matter on his way, he 
shrunk a good deal from placing himself 
at the beck and call of another : it threat- 
ened to interfere with that sense of per- 
sonal freedom which is yet dearer per- 
haps to the poor than to the rich. But 
he argued with himself that he had 
found no infringement of it under Blue 
Peter, and that if the marquis were real- 
ly as friendly as he professed to be, it 
was not likely to turn out otherwise with 
him. 

Lady Florimel anticipated pleasure in 
Malcolm’s probable consent to her fath- 
er’s plan, but certainly he would not have 
been greatly uplifted by a knowledge of 
the sort of pleasure she expected. For 
some time the girl had been suffering 
from too much liberty. Perhaps there 
is no life more filled with a sense of op- 
pression and lack of freedom than that 
of those under no external control, in 
whom Duty has not yet gathered suf- 
ficient strength to assume the reins of 
government and subject them to the 
highest law. Their condition is like that 
of a creature under an exhausted re- 
ceiver — oppressed from within outward 
for want of the counteracting external 
weight. It was amusement she hoped 
for from Malcolm’s becoming in a sense 
one of the family at the House, to which 
she believed her knowledge of the ex- 
tremely bare outlines of his history would 
largely contribute. 

He was shown at once into the pres- 
ence of his lordship, whom he found at 
breakfast with his daughter. 

“Well, MacPhail,’’ said the marquis, 
“have you made up your mind to be my 
skipper ?’’ 

“Willin’ly, my lord,’’ answered Mal- 
colm. 

“ Do you know how to manage a sail- 
boat ?’’ 

“ I wad need, my lord.’’ 

“ Shall you want any help ?’’ 

“That depen’s upo’ saiveral things — 
her ain size, the wull o’ the win’, an’ 
whether or no yer lordship or my leddy 
can tak the tiller.’’ 

“We can’t settle about that, then, till 
she comes. I hear she ’ll soon be on 
her way now. But I cannot have you 


MALCOLM. 


dressed like a farmer,” said his lordship, 
looking sharply at the Sunday clothes 
which Malcolm had donned for the visit. 

‘‘What was I to do, my lord ?” return- 
ed Malcolm apologetically. ‘‘The only 
ither claes I hae are verra fishy, an’ 
neither yersel’ nor my leddy cud bide 
them i’ the room aside ye.” 

‘‘ Certainly not,” responded the mar- 
quis, as in a leisurely manner he devour- 
ed his omelette : ‘‘ I was thinking of your 
future position as skipper of my boat. 
What would you say to a kilt, now ?” 

‘‘ Na, na, my lord,” rejoined Malcolm : 
‘‘ a kilt’s no seafarin’ claes. A kilt wad- 
na du ava’, my lord.” 

‘‘You cannot surely object to the dress 
of your own people,” said the marquis. 

‘‘ The kilt ’s weel eneuch upon a hill- 
side,” said Malcolm, ‘‘ I dinna doobt ; 
but faith ! seafarin’, my lord, ye wad 
want the trews as weel.” 

‘‘ Well, go to the best tailor in the town 
and order a naval suit — white ducks and 
a blue jacket : two suits you’ll want.” 

‘‘We s’ gar ae shuit sair ’s [satisfy us) 
to begin wi’, my lord. I’ll jist gang to 
Jamie Sangster, wha maks a’ my claes 
— no ’at their mony — an’ get /lim to 
mizzur me. He ’ll mak them weel 
eneuch for me. Ye’re aye sure o’ the 
worth o’ yer siller frae him." 

‘‘ I tell you to go to the best tailor in 
the town and order two suits.” 

‘‘ Na, na, my lord, there’s no need ; I 
canna affoord it, forbye. We ’re no a’ 
made o’ siller like yer lordship.” 

‘‘You booby ! do you suppose I would 
tell you to order clothes I did not mean 
to pay for ?” 

Lady Florimel found her expectation 
of amusement not likely to be disap- 
pointed. 

‘‘ Hoots, my lord !” returned Malcolm, 
‘‘that wad never du. I 7nau7i pey for 
my ain claes. I wad be in a constant 
terror o’ blaudin’ [spoiling) o’ them gien 
I didna, an’ that wad be eneuch to mak 
a body meeserable. It wad be a’ the 
same, forbye, oot a7t' oot, as weirin’ a 
leevry !” 

‘‘Well, well, please your pride and be 
damned to you !” said the marquis. 

‘‘ Yes, let him please his pride and be 


135 

damned to him !” assented Lady Flori- 
mel with perfect gravity. 

Malcolm started and stared. Lady 
Florimel kept an absolute composure. 
The marquis burst into a loud laugh. 

Malcolm stood bewildered for a mo- 
ment. ‘‘I’m thinkin’ I’m gaein’ daft 
[delirious)\" he said at length, putting 
his hand to his head. ‘‘ It’s time I gaed. 
Guid-mornin’, my lord.” 

He turned and left the room, followed 
by a fresh peal from his lordship, min- 
gling with which his ear plainly detect- 
ed the silvery veins of Lady Florimel’s 
equally merry laughter. 

When he came to himself and was 
able to reflect, he saw there must have 
been some joke involved : the behavior 
of both indicated as much ; and with 
this conclusion he heartened his dismay. 

The next morning Duncan called on 
Mrs. Partan and begged her acceptance 
of his stock in trade, as, having been his 
lordship’s piper for some time, he was 
now at length about to occupy his proper 
quarters within the policies. Mrs. Find- 
lay acquiesced, with an air better suited 
to the granting of slow leave to labor- 
some petition than the accepting of such 
a generous gift ; but she made some 
amends by graciously expressing a hope 
that Duncan would not forget his old 
friends now that he was going amongst 
lords and ladies, to which Duncan re- 
turned as courteous answer as if he had 
been addressing Lady Florimel herself. 

Before the end of the week his few 
household goods were borne in a cart 
through the sea -gate dragonized by 
Bykes, to whom Malcolm dropped a 
humorous ‘‘Weel, Johnny!” as he pass- 
ed, receiving a nondescript kind of grin 
in return. The rest of the forenoon was 
spent in getting the place in order, and 
in the afternoon, arrayed in his new gar- 
ments, Malcolm reported himself at the 
House. Admitted to his lordship’s pres- 
ence, he had a question to ask and a re- 
quest to prefer. 

‘‘ Hae ye dune onything, my lord,” 
he said, ‘‘aboot Mistress Catanach ?” 

‘‘What do you mean ?’,’ 

‘‘ Anent yon cat-prowl aboot the hoose, 
my lord.” 


136 


MALCOLM. 


"No. You haven’t discovered any- 
thing more, have you ?’’ 

"Na, my lord : I haena had a chance. 
But ye may be sure she had no guid de- 
sign in ’t." 

" I don’t suspect her of any.’’ 

“Weel, my lord, hae ye ony objection 
to lat me sleep up yonner?’’ 

"None at all — only you’d better see 
what Mrs. Courthope has to say to it. 
Perhaps you won’t be so ready after you 
hear her story.’’ 

" But I hae your lordship’s leave to tak 
ony room I like ?’’ 

" Certainly. Go to Mrs. Courthope and 
tell her I wish you to choose your own 
quarters.’’ 

Having straightway delivered his lord- 
ship’s message, Mrs. Courthope, wonder- 
ing a little thereat, proceeded to show 
•him those portions of the house set apart 
for the servants. He followed her from 
floor to floor — last to the upper regions, 
and through all the confused rambling 
roofs of the old pile, now descending a 
sudden steep-yawning stair, now ascend- 
ing another where none could have been 
supposed to exist, oppressed all the time 
with a sense of the multitudinous and in- 
tricate such as he had never before ex- 
perienced, and such as perhaps only the 
works of man can produce, the intricacy 
and variety of those of Nature being ever 
veiled in the grand simplicity which 
springs from primal unity of purpose. 

I find no part of an ancient house so 
full of interest as the garret region. It 
has all the mystery of the dungeon cel- 
lars, with a far more striking variety of 
form and a bewildering curiosity of adap- 
tation, the peculiarities of roof- shapes 
and the consequent complexities of their 
relations and junctures being so much 
greater than those of foundation-plans. 
Then the sense of lofty loneliness in the 
-deeps of air, and at the same time of 
proximity to things aerial — doves and 
••martins, vanes and gilded balls and 
lightning-conductors, the waves of the 
sea of wind breaking on the chimneys 
for rocks, and the- crashing roll of the 
thunder — are in harmony with the high- 
est spiritual instincts ; while the clouds 
and the stars look, if not nearer, yet 


more germane, and the moon gazes 
down on the lonely dweller in uplifted 
places as if she had secrets with such. 
The cellars are the metaphysics, the gar- 
rets the poetry of the house. 

Mrs. Courthope was more than kind, 
for she was greatly pleased at having 
Malcolm for an inmate. She led him 
from room to room, suggesting now and 
then a choice, and listening amusedly to 
his remarks of liking or disliking and 
his marvel at strangeness or extent. At 
last he found himself following her along 
the passage in which was the mysterious 
door, but she never stayed her step, or 
seemed to intend showing one of the 
many rooms opening upon it. 

"Sic a bee’s-byke o’ rooms!’’ said 
Malcolm, making a halt. “Wha sleeps 
here ?’’ 

"Nobody has slept in one of these 
rooms for I dare not say how many 
years,’’ replied Mrs. Courthope, without 
stopping; and as she spoke she passed 
the fearful door. 

" I wad like to see intill this room,’’ said 
Malcolm. 

"That door is never opened,’’ answered 
Mrs. Courthope, who had now reached 
the end of the passage, and turned, ling- 
ering as in act while she spoke to move 
on. 

"And what for that?” asked Malcolm, 
continuing to stand before it. 

"I would rather not answer you just 
here. Come along. This is not a part 
of the house where you would like to be, 
I am sure.” 

" Hoo ken ye that, mem ? An’ hoo 
can I say mysel’ afore ye hae shawn me 
what the room ’s like ? It may be the 
verra place to tak my fancy. Jist open 
the door, mem, gien ye please, an’ lat’s 
hae a keek intill ’t.” 

"I daren’t open it. It’s never opened, 
I tell you. It’s against the rules of the 
house. Come to my room, and I’ll tell 
you the story about it.” 

"Weel, ye’ll lat me see intill the neist 
— winna ye ? There’s nae law agane 
openin’ hit — is there?” said Malcolm, 
approaching the door next to the one in 
dispute. 

"Certainly not; but I’m pretty sure, 


MALCOLM. 


137 


once you’ve heard the story I have to 
tell, you won’t choose to sleep in this 
part of the house.” 

‘‘ Lat’s luik, ony gait.” 

So saying, Malcolm took upon him- 
self to try the handle of the door. It 
was not locked : he peeped in, then en- 
tered. It was a small room, low-ceiled, 
with a deep dormer window in the high 
pediment of a roof, and a turret-recess 
on each side of the window. It seemed 
very light after the passage, and looked 
down upon the burn. It was comfort- 
ably furnished, and the curtains of its 
tent-bed were chequered in squares of 
blue and white. ' 

“This is the verra place for me, mem,” 
said Malcolm, reissuing; “that is,” he 
added, ‘‘gien ye dinna think it’s ower 
gran’ for the likes o’ me ’at ’s no been 
used to onything half sae guid.” 

“You’re quite welcome to it,” said Mrs. 
Courthope, all but confident he would 
not care to occupy it after hearing the 
tale of Lord Gernon. 

She had not moved from the end of 
the passage while Malcolm was in the 
room : somewhat hurriedly she now led 
the way to her own. It seemed half a 
mile off to the wondering Malcolm as he 
followed her down winding stairs, along 
endless passages and round innumera- 
ble corners. Arrived at last, she made 
him sit down, and gave him a glass of 
home-made wine to drink, while she told 
him the story much as she had already 
told it to the marquis, adding a hope to 
the effect that if ever the marquis should 
express a wish to pry into the secret of 
the chamber, Malcolm would not encour- 
age him in a fancy the indulgence of 
which was certainly useless, and might 
be dangerous. 

''Me!" exclaimed Malcolm with sur- 
prise. “As gien he wad heed a word / 
said !” 

“Very little sometimes will turn a man 
either in one direction or the other,” said 
Mrs. Courthope. 

“But surely, mem, ye dinna believe in 
sic fule auld-warld stories as that ? It’s 
weel eneuch for a tale, but to think o’ a 
body turnin’ ae fit oot o’ ’s gait for ’t, 
blecks {nonplusses) me.” 


“I don’t say I believe it,” returned 
Mrs. Courthope, a little pettishly, “but 
there’s no good in mere foolhardiness.” 

“Ye dinna surely think, mem, ’at God 
wad lat onything depen’ upo’ whether a 
man opent a door in ’s ain hoose or no ? 
It’s agane a’ rizzon,” persisted Malcolm. 

“ There might be reasons we couldn’t 
understand,” she replied. “To do what 
we are warned against from any quarter, 
without good reason, must be foolhardy 
at best.” 

“Weel, mem, I maun hae the room 
neist the auld warlock’s, ony gait, for in 
that I’m gaun to sleep, an’ in nae ither 
in a’ this muckle hoose.” 

Mrs. Courthope rose, full of uneasi- 
ness, and walked up and down the 
room. 

“I’m takin’ upo’ me naething ayont 
his lordship’s ain word,” urged Malcolm. 

“ If you’re to go by the very word,” 
rejoined Mrs. Courthope, stopping and 
looking him full in the face, “you might 
insist on sleeping in Lord Gernon’s 
chamber itself.” 

“Weel, an’ sae I micht,” returned 
Malcolm. 

The hinted possibility of having to 
change bad for so much worse appear- 
ed to quench further objection. 

“I must get it ready myself, then,” 
she said resignedly, “ for the maids won’t 
even go up that stair. And as to going 
into any of those rooms — ” 

“’Deed no, mem ! ye sanna du that,” 
cried Malcolm. “ Sayna a word to ane 
o’ them. I s’ wadger I’m as guid’s the 
auld warlock himsel’ at makin’ a bed. 
Jist gie me the sheets an’ the blankets, 
an’ I’ll du’t as trim ’s ony lass i’ the 
hoose.” 

“But the bed will want airing,” ob- 
jected the housekeeper. 

“By a’ accounts that’s the last thing 
it’s likly to want, lyin’ neist door to }'on 
chaumer. But I hae sleepit mony ’s the 
time er’ noo upo’ the tap o’ a boatload 
o’ herrin’, an’ gien that never did me 
ony ill, it’s no likly a guid bed ’ll kill 
me gien it sud be a wee mochy {rather 
full of moths)" 

Mrs. Courthope yielded and gave him 
all that was needful, and before night 


138 


MALCOLM. 


Malcolm had made his new quarters 
quite comfortable. He did not retire to 
them, however, until he had seen his 
grandfather laid down to sleep in his 
lonely cottage. 

About noon the next day the old man 
made his appearance in the kitchen. 
How he had found his way to it neither 
he nor any one else could tell. There 
happened to be no one there when he 
entered, and the cook when she return- 
ed stood for a moment in the door, 
watching him as he felt flitting about 
with huge bony hands whose touch was 
yet light as the poise of a butterfly. Not 
knowing the old man, she fancied at first 
he was feeling after something in the 
shape of food, but presently his hands 
fell upon a brass candlestick. He clutch- 
ed it and commenced fingering it all 
over. Alas ! it was clean, and with a 
look of disappointment he replaced it. 
Wondering yet more what his quest 
could be, she watched on. The next in- 
stant he had laid hold of a silver candle- 
stick not yet passed through the hands 
of the scullery-maid, and for a moment 
she fancied him a thief, for he had re- 
jected the brass and now took the silver ; 
but he went no farther with it than the 
fireplace, where he sat down on the end 
of the large fender, and, having spread 
his pocket-handkerchief over his kilted 
knees, drew a similar rag from some- 
where and commenced cleaning it. 

By this time one of the maids who 
knew him had joined the cook, and also 
stood watching him with amusement. 
But when she saw the old knife drawn 
from his stocking, and about to be ap- 
plied to the nozzle, to free it from ad- 
hering wax, it seemed more than time 
to break the silence. “ Eh ! that’s a 
siller can’lestick, Maister MacPhail,” she 
cried, “ an’ ye maunna tak a k-nife till 
’t, or ye’ll scrat it a’ dreidfu’.” 

An angry flush glowed in the withered 
cheeks of the piper as, without the least 
start at the suddenness of her interfer- 
ence, he turned his face in the direction 
of the speaker : “You take old Tuncan’s 
finkers for persons of no’ etchucation, 
\nem. As if tey couldn’t know ta silfer 
from ta prass.! If tey wass so stupid. 


her nose would pe telling tern so. Efen 
old Tuncan’s knife ’ll pe knowing petter 
than to scratch ta silfer, or ta prass either : 
old Tuncan’s knife would pe scratching 
nothing petter than ta skin of a Caw- 
mill.’’ 

Now the candlestick had no business 
in the kitchen, and if it were scratched 
the butler would be indignant ; but the 
girl was a Campbell, and Duncan’s words 
so frightened her that she did not dare 
interfere. She soon saw, however, that 
the piper had not over-vaunted his skill : 
the skene left not a mark upon the metal. 
In a few minutes he had melted away 
the wax he could not otherwise reach, 
and had rubbed the candlestick perfectly 
bright, leaving behind him no trace ex- 
cept an unpleasant odor of train-oil from 
the rag. From that hour he was cleaner 
of lamps and candlesticks, as well as 
blower of bagpipes, to the House of Los- 
sie, and had everything provided neces- 
sary to the performance of his duties 
with comfort and success. 

Before many weeks were over he had 
proved the possession of such a talent for 
arrangement and general management, 
at least in everything connected with il- 
lumination, that the entire charge of the 
lighting of the house was left in his 
hands, even to that of its stores of wax 
and tallow and oil ; and great was the 
pleasure he derived, not only from the 
trust reposed in him, but from other 
more occult sources connected with the 
duties of his office. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE LIBRARY. 

Malcolm’s first night was rather trou- 
bled, not primarily from the fact that but 
a thin partition separated him from the 
wizard’s chamber, but from the deadness 
of the silence around him ; for he had 
been all his life accustomed to the near 
noise of the sea, and its absence had 
upon him the rousing effect of an unac- 
customed sound. He kept hearing the 
dead silence — was constantly dropping 
as it were into jts gulf ; and it was no 
wonder that a succession of sleepless 


MALCOLM. 


139 


fits, strung together rather than divided 
by as many dozes little better than start- 
led rousings. should at length have so 
shaken his mental frame as to lay it open 
to the assaults of nightly terrors, the po- 
sition itself being sufficient to seduce his 
imagination and carry it over to the in- 
terests of his enemy. 

But Malcolm had early learned that a 
man’s will must, like a true monarch, 
rule down every rebellious movement of 
its subjects, and he was far from yielding 
to such inroads as now assailed him ; still, 
it was long before he fell asleep, and 
then only to dream without quite losing 
consciousness of his peculiar surround- 
ings. He seemed to know that he lay 
in his own bed, and yet to be somehow 
aware of the presence of a pale woman 
in a white garment, who sat on the side 
of the bed in the next room, still and 
silent, with her hands in her lap and her 
eyes on the ground. He thought he had 
seen her before, and knew, notwithstand- 
ing her silence, that she was lamenting 
over a child she had lost. He knew also 
where her child was — that it lay crying 
in a cave down by the sea-shore — but he 
could neither rise to go to her nor open 
his mouth to call. The vision kept com- 
ing and coming, like the same tune 
played over and over on a barrel-organ, 
and when he woke seemed to fill all the 
time he had slept. 

About ten o’clock he was summoned 
to the marquis’s presence, and found 
him at breakfast with Lady Florimel. 

“Where did you sleep last night?’’ 
asked the marquis. 

“Neist door to the auld warlock,’’ an- 
swered Malcolm. 

Lady Florimel looked up with a glance 
of bright interest: her father had just 
been telling her the story. 

“You did!’’ said the marquis. “Then 
Mrs. Courthope — did she tell you the le- 
gend about him ?’’ 

“Ay did she, my lord.’’ 

“Well, how did you sleep?’’ 

“Middlin’ only.’’ 

“ How was that .?’’ 

“I dinna ken, ’cep it was 'at I was 
fule eneuch to fin’ the place gey eerie- 
like.’’ 


“Aha!’’ said the marquis. “You’ve 
had enough of it! You won’t try it 
again !’’ 

“What’s that ye say, my lord?’’ re- 
joined Malcolm. “Wad ye hae a man 
turn ’s back at the first fleg? Na, na, 
my lord, that wad never du !’’ 

“ Oh, then you did have a fright ?’’ 

“Na, I canna say that, aither. Nae- 
thing waur came near me nor a dream 
’at plaguit me ; an’ it wasna sic an ill ane, 
efter a’.’’ 

“What was it ?’’ 

“I thocht there was a bonny leddy sit- 
tin’ o’ the bed i’ the neist room, in her 
nicht-goon like, an’ she was greitin’ sair 
in her heart, though she never loot a tear 
fa’ doon. She was greitin’ aboot a bair- 
nie she had lost, an’ I kent weel whaur 
the bairnie was — doon in a cave upo’ 
the shore, I thocht — an’ was jist yirnin’ 
to gang till her an’ tell her, an’ stop the 
greitin’ o’ her hert, but I cudna muv han’ 
nor fit, naither cud I open my mou’ to 
cry till her. An’ I gaed dreamin’ on at 
the same thing, ower and ower a’ the 
time I was asleep. But there was nae- 
thing sae frichtsome aboot that, my lord.’’ 

“No, indeed,’’ said his lordship. 

“ Only it garred me greit tu, my lord, 
’cause I cudna win at her to help her.’’ 

His lordship laughed, but oddly, and 
changed the subject. 

“There’s no word of that boat yet,’’ 
he said. “ I must write again.’’ 

“May I show Malcolm the library, 
papa ?’’ asked Lady Florimel. 

“I wad fain see the buiks,’’ adjected 
Malcolm. 

“You don’t know what a scholar he 
is, papa.’’ 

“Little eneuch o’ that,’’ said Malcolm. 

“Oh yes, I do,’’ said the marquis, an- 
swering his daughter. “ But he must 
keep the skipper from my books and the 
scholar from my boat.’’ 

“Ye mean a scholar wha wad skip yer 
buiks, my lord. Haith ! sic wad be a 
skipper wha wad ill scull yer boat,’’ said 
Malcolm, with a laugh at the poor at- 
tempt. 

“Bravo!’’ said the marquis, who cer- 
tainly was not over-critical. “ Can you 
write a good hand ?’’ 


140 


MALCOLM. 


“ No ill, my lord.” 

” So much the better. I see you’ll be 
worth your wages.” 

‘‘That depen’s on the wages,” return- 
ed Malcolm. 

‘‘And that reminds me you’ve said 
nothing about them yet.” 

‘‘Naither has yer lordship.” 

‘‘Well, what are they to be ?” 

‘‘Whatever ye think proper, my lord. 
Only dinna gar me gang to Maister 
Crathie for them.” 

The marquis had sent away the man 
who was waiting when Malcolm entered, 
and during this conversation Malcolm 
had of his own accord been doing his 
best to supply his place. The meal end- 
ed, Lady Florimel desired him to wait a 
moment in the hall. 

‘‘ He ’s so amusing, papa !” she said. 
‘‘ I want to see him stare at the books. 
He thinks the schoolmaster’s hundred 
volumes a grand library. He’s such a 
goose ! It’s the greatest fun in the world 
watching him.” 

‘‘No such goose,” said the marquis, 
but he recognized himself in his child, 
and laughed. 

Florimel ran off merrily, as bent on a 
joke, and joined Malcolm. 

“ Now, I’m going to show you the li- 
brary,” she said. 

‘‘Thank ye, my leddy : that will be 
gran’,” replied Malcolm. 

He followed her up two staircases and 
through more than one long narrow pas- 
sage : all the ducts of the house were 
long and narrow, causing him a sense 
of imprisonment, vanishing ever into 
freedom at the opening of some door 
into a great room. But never had he 
had a dream of such a room as that at 
which they now arrived. He started 
with a sort of marveling dismay when 
she threw open the door of the library 
and he beheld ten thousand volumes at 
a glance, all in solemn stillness. It was 
like a sepulchre of kings. But his as- 
tonishment took a strange form of ex- 
pression, the thought in which was be- 
yond the reach of his mistress. 

‘‘Eh, my leddy,” he cried, after staring 
for a while in breathless bewilderment, 
‘‘ it's jist like a byke o’ frozen bees ! Eh ! 


gien they war a’ to come to life an’ stick 
their stangs o’ trowth intill a body, the 
waukin’ up wad be awfu’ ! It jist gars 
my heid gang roon’,” he added, after a 
pause. 

‘‘It is a fine thing,” said the girl, ‘‘to 
have such a library.” 

‘“Deed is ’t, my leddy! It’s ane o* 
the preevileeges o’ rank,” said Malcolm. 
‘‘It taks a faimily that hands on thiou’ 
centeries in a hoose whaur things gether 
to mak sic an unaccoontable getherin’ 
o’ buiks as that. It’s a gran’ sicht — 
worth livin’ to see.” 

‘‘ Suppose you were to be a rich man 
some day,” said Florimel in the con- 
descending tone she generally adopted 
when addressing him, ‘‘it would be one 
of the first things you would set about — 
wouldn’t it? — to get such a library to- 
gether.” 

‘‘ Na, my leddy : I wad hae mair wut. 
A leebrary canna be made a’ at ance, 
ony mair nor a hoose or a nation or a 
muckle tree : they maun a’ tak time to 
grow, an’ sae maun a leebrary. I wad- 
na even ken what buiks to gang an’ speir 
for. I daur say, gien I war to try, I cud- 
na at a moment’s notice tell ye the 
names o’ mair nor a twa score o’ buiks 
at the ootside. Fowk maun mak ac- 
quaintance amo’ buiks as they wad amo’ 
leevin’ fowk.” 

‘‘But you could get somebody who 
knew more about them than yourself to 
buy for you.” 

‘‘ I wad as sune think o’ gettin’ some- 
body to ait my denner for me.” 

‘‘No, that’s not fair,” said Florimel. 
‘‘ It would only be like getting somebody 
who knew more of cookery than your- 
self to order your dinner for you.” 

‘‘Ye’re richt, my leddy, but still I wad 
as sune thing o’ the tane ’s the tither. 
What wad come o’ the like o’ me, div 
ye think, broucht up upo’ meal-brose 
an’ herrin’, gien ye was to set me doon 
to sic a denner as my lord yer father wad 
ait ilka day an’ think naething o’ ? But 
gien some fowk hed the buyin’ o’ my 
buiks. I’m thinkin’ the first thing I wad 
hae to du wad be to fling the half o’ 
them into the burn.” 

‘‘What good would that do ?” 


MALCOLM. 


“Clear awa’ the rubbitch. Ye see, 
my leddy, it’s no buiks, but what buiks. 
Eh ! there maun be mony ane o’ the 
richt sort here, though. I wonner gien 
Mr. Graham ever saw them. He wad 
surely hae made mention o’ them i’ my 
bearin’. ’’ 

“ What would be the first thing you 
■would do, then, Malcolm, if you hap- 
pened to turn out a great man after all .?’’ 
said Florimel, seating herself in a huge 
library-chair, whence, having arranged 
her skirt, she looked up in the young 
fisherman’s face. 

“I doobt I wad hae to sit doon an’ 
turn ower the change a feow times afore 
I kent aither mysel’ or what wad become 
me,’’ he said. 

“ That’s not answering my question,” 
retorted Florimel. 

“Weel, the second thing I wad do,” 
said Malcolm thoughtfully, and pausing 
a moment, “wad be to get Mr. Graham 
to gang wi’ me to Ebberdeen an’ carry 
me throu’ the classes there. Of coorse, 
I wadna try for prizes : that wadna be 
fair to them ’at cudna affoord a tutor at 
their lodgin’s.” 

“But it’s the first thing you would 
do that I want to know,” persisted the 
girl. 

“ I tellt ye I wad sit doon an’ think 
aboot it.” 

“ I don’t count that doing anything.” 

“ ’Deed, my leddy, thinkin’s the hard- 
est wark I ken.” 

“Well, what is it you would think 
about first ?” said Florimel, not to be di- 
verted from her course. 

“Ow ! the third thing I wad du — ” 

“I want to know the first thing you 
would think about.” 

“ I canna say yet what the third thing 
wad be. Fower years at the college wad 
gie me time to reflec’ upon a hantle o’ 
things.” 

“ I insist on knowing the first thing 
you would think about doing,” cried 
Florimel with mock imperiousness, but 
real tyranny. 

“Weel, my leddy, gien ye wull hae ’t — 
But hoo great a man wad ye be makin’ 
o’ me ?” 

“ Oh ! let me see : yes, yes, the heir to 


141 

an earldom. That’s liberal enough, is it 
not?” 

“ That’s as muckle as say I wad come 
to be a yerl some day, sae be I didna 
dee upo’ the ro’d ?” 

“Yes, that’s what it means.” 

“An’ a yerl’s neist door till a markis, 
isna he 

“Yes, he’s in the next lower rank.” 

“ Lower ? — ay ! No that muckle, may- 
be ?” 

“No,” said Lady Florimel consequen- 
tially : “ the difference is not so great as 
to prevent their meeting on a level of 
courtesy.” 

“ I dinna freely ken what that means, 
but gien ’t be yer leddyship’s wull to 
mak a yerl o’ me. I’m no to raise ony 
objections.” 

He uttered it definitively, and stood 
silent. 

“Well ?” said the girl. 

“What’s yer wull, my leddy?” return- 
ed Malcolm, as if roused from a reverie. 

“Where’s your answer ?” 

“ I said I wad be a yerl to please yer 
leddyship. I wad be a flunky for the 
same rizzon, gien ’t was to wait upo’ 
yersel’ an’ nae ither.” 

“I ask you,” said Florimel, more im- 
periously than ever, “what is the first 
thing you would do if you found your- 
self no longer a fisherman, but the son 
of an earl ?” 

“But it maun be that I 7ifas a fisher- 
man — to the en’ o’ a’ creation, my leddy.” 

“You refuse to answer my question ?” 

“ By no means, my leddy, gien ye wull 
hae an answer.” 

“I w/Z/have an answer.” 

“ Gien ye wull hae ’t, than — But — ” 

“No duts, but an answer.” 

“Weel — it’s yer ain wyte, my leddy — 
I wad jist gang doon upo’ my k-nees, 
whaur I stude afore ye, and tell ye a 
heap o’ things ’at maybe by that time ye 
wad ken weel eneuch a’ready.” 

“What would you tell me ?” 

“ I wad tell ye ’at yer een war like the 
verra leme o’ the levin [brightness of the 
lightning) itsel’ ; yer cheek like a white 
rose i’ the licht frae a reid ane ; yer hair 
jist the saft lattin’ gang o’ His ban’s 
whan the Maker cud du nae mair ; yer 


142 


MALCOLM. 


mou’ jist fashioned to drive fowk daft 
’at daurna come nearer nor luik at it ; 
an’ for yer shape, it was like naething in 
Natur’ but itsel’. Ye wad hae ’t, my 
leddy,” he added apologetically ; and 
well he might, for Lady Florimel’s cheek 
had flushed and her eye had been dart- 
ing fire long before he got to the end of 
his Celtic outpouring. Whether she was 
really angry or not, she had no difficulty 
in making Malcolm believe she was. 
She rose from her chair, though not until 
he had ended, swept halfway to the door, 
then turned upon him with a flash. 

"How dare you ?’’ she said, her breed 
well obeying the call of the game. 

"I’m verra sorry, my leddy,’’ faltered 
Malcolm, trying to steady himself against 
a strange trembling that had laid hold 
upon him, "but you maun allop it was 
a’ yer ain wyte.’’ 

" Do you dare to say / encouraged you 
to talk such stuff to me ?’’ 

"Ye did gar me, my leddy.’’ 

Florimel turned and undulated from 
the room, leaving the poor fellow like a 
statue in the middle of it, with the books 
all turning their backs upon him. 

"Noo," he said to himself, "she’s aff 
to tell her father, and there’ll be a bonny 
bane to pyke atween him an’ me. But 
haith ! I’ll jist tell him the trowth o’ ’t, 
an’ syne he can mak a kirk an’ a mill 
o’ ’t, gien he likes.’’ 

With this resolution he stood his 
ground, every moment expecting the 
wrathful father to make his appearance 
and at the least order him out of the 
house. But minute passed after minute 
and no wrathful father came. He grew 
calmer by degrees, and at length began 
to peep at the titles of the books. 

When the great bell rang for lunch he 
was embalmed rather than buried in one 
of Milton’s prose volumes, standing be- 
fore the shelf on which he had found it, 
the very incarnation of study. 

My reader may well judge that Mal- 
colm could not have been very far gone 
in love, seeing he was thus able to read. 
I remark in return that it was not mere- 
ly the distance between him and Lady 
Florimel that had hitherto preserved his 
being from absorption and his will from 


annihilation, but also the strength of his 
common sense and the force of his in- 
dividuality. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

MILTON, AND THE BAY MARE. 

For some days Malcolm saw nothing 
more of Lady Florimel, but with his grand- 
father’s new dwelling to see to, with the 
carpenter’s shop and the blacksmith’s 
forge open to him, and an eye to detect 
whatever wanted setting right, the hours 
did not hang heavy on his hands. At 
length, whether it was that she thought 
she had punished him sufficiently for an 
offence for which she was herself only 
to blame, or that she had indeed never 
been offended at all, and had only been 
keeping up her one-sided game, she be- 
gan again to indulge the interest she 
could not help feeling in him — an inter- 
est heightened by the mystery which hung 
over his birth, and by the fact that she 
knew that concerning him of which he 
was himself ignorant. At the same time, 
as I have already said, she had no little 
need of an escape from the ennui 
now that the novelty of a country life 
had worn off, did more than occasional- 
ly threaten her. She began again to seek 
his company under the guise of his help, 
half requesting, half commanding his 
services ; and Malcolm found himself 
admitted afresh to the heaven of her 
favor. Young as he was, he read him- 
self a lesson suitable to the occasion. 

One afternoon the marquis sent foi 
him to the library, but when he reached 
it his master was not yet there. He took 
down the volume of Milton in which he 
had been reading before, and was soon 
absorbed in it again. "Faith ! it’s a big 
shame !’’ he cried at length, almost un- 
consciously, and closed the book with a 
slam. 

"What is a big shame ?’’ said the voice 
of the marquis close behind him. 

Malcolm started, and almost dropped 
the volume. " I beg yer lordship’s par- 
don,’’ he said: "I didna hear ye come 
in.’’ 

"What was the book you were read- 
ing?’’ asked the marquis. 


MALCOLM. 


143 


" I was jist readin’ a bit o’ Milton’s 
Eikonoklastes," answered Malcolm, “ — a 
bulk I hae hard tell o’, but never saw wi’ 
my ain een afore.” 

‘‘And what’s your quarrel with it?” 
asked his lordship. 

‘‘ I canna mak oot what sud set a great 
man like Milton sae sair agane a puir 
cratur like Cherles.” 

‘‘ Read the history, and you’ll see.” 

‘‘ Ow ! I ken something aboot the pol- 
itics o’ the time, an’ I’m no sayin’ they- 
war that wrang to tak the heid fra him, 
but what for sud Milton hate the man 
efter the king was deid ?” 

‘‘Because he didn’t think the king 
dead enough, I suppose.” 

‘‘I see ; an’ they war settin’ him up for 
a sant. Still, he had a richt to fair play. 
Jist hearken, my lord.” 

So saying, Malcolm reopened the vol- 
ume and read the well-known passage, 
in the first chapter, in which Milton cen- 
sures the king as guilty of utter irreve- 
rence because of his adoption of the 
prayer of Pamela in the Arcadia. 

‘‘Noo, my lord,” he said, half closing 
the book, ‘‘what wad ye expec’ to come 
upo’, efter sic a denunciation as that, but 
some awfu’ haithenish thing? Weel, jist 
hearken again, for here’s the verra prayer 
itsel’ in a futnote.” 

His lordship had thrown himself into 
a chair, had crossed one leg over the 
other, and was now stroking its knee. 

‘‘Noo, my lord,” said Malcolm again, 
as he concluded, ‘‘ what think ye o’ the 
jeedgment passed ?” 

‘‘Really I have no opinion to give 
about it,” answered the marquis. ‘‘I’m 
no theologian. I see no harm in the 
prayer,” 

‘‘Hairm in ’t, my lord! It’s perfetly 
gran’ ! It’s sic a prayer as cudna weel 
be aiqualt. It vexes me to the verra hert 
o’ my sowl that a michty man like Mil- 
ton — ane whase bein’ was a crood o’ her- 
monies — sud ca’ that the prayer o’ a hai- 
then wuman till a haithen god. ‘ O all- 
seein’ Licht, an’ eternal Life o’ a’ things!’ 
Ca’s he that a haithen god, or her ’at 
prayed sic a prayer a haithen wuman ?” 

‘‘Well, well,” said the marquis, ‘‘I 
don’t want it all over again. I see noth- 


ing to find fault with, myself, but I don’t 
take much interest in that sort of thing.” 

‘‘There a wee bitty o’ Laitin, here i’ 
the note, ’at I canna freely mak oot,” 
said Malcolm, approaching Lord Lossie 
with his finger on the passage, never 
doubting that the owner of such a library 
must be able to read Latin perfectly : Mr. 
Graham would have put him right at 
once, and his books would have been 
lost in one of the window-corners of this 
huge place. But his lordship waved him 
back. 

‘‘ I can’t be your tutor,” he said, not 
unkindly. ‘‘My Latin is far too rusty 
for use.” 

The fact was that his lordship had 
never got beyond Maturin Cordier’s Col- 
loquies. 

‘‘Besides,” he went on, ‘‘I want you 
to do something for me.” 

Malcolm instantly replaced the book 
on its shelf, and approached his master, 
saying, ‘‘Wull yer lordship lat me read 
whiles i’ this gran’ place ? I mean whan 
I’m no wantit ither gaits, an’ there’s nae- 
body here.” 

‘‘To be sure,” answered the marquis; 
‘‘only the scholar mustn’t come with the 
skipper’s hands.” 

‘‘I s’ tak guid care o’ that, my lord. I 
wad as sune think o’ han’lin’ a book wi’ 
wark-like ban’s as I wad o’ branderin’ a 
mackerel ohn cleaned it oot.” 

‘‘And when we have visitors you’ll be 
careful not to get in their way.” 

‘‘ I wull that, my lord.” 

“And now,”- said his lordship rising, 
‘‘ I want you to take a letter to Mrs. Stew- 
art of Kirkbyres. Can you ride ?” 

‘‘I can ride the bare back weel eneuch 
for a fisher-loon,” said Malcolm, ‘‘but I 
never was upon a saiddle i’ my life.” 

‘‘The sooner you get used to one the 
better. Go and tell Stoat to saddle the 
bay mare. Wait in the yard : I will 
bring the letter out to you myself.” 

‘‘Verra weel, my lord,” said Malcolm. 
He knew, from sundry remarks he had 
heard about the stables, that the mare in 
question was a ticklish one to ride, but 
would rather have his neck broken than 
object. 

Hardly was she ready when the mar- 


144 


MALCOLM. 


quis appeared, accompanied by Lady 
Florimel, both expecting to enjoy a laugh 
at Malcolm’s expense. But when the 
mare was brought out, and he was going 
to mount her where she stood, something 
seemed to wake in the marquis’s heart, 
or conscience, or wherever the pigmy 
Duty slept that occupied the all-but sine- 
cure of his moral economy : he looked 
at Malcolm for a moment, then at the 
ears of the mare hugging her neck, and 
last at the stones of the paved yard. 

“Lead her on to the turf. Stoat,’’ he 
said. 

The grooyi obeyed, all followed, and 
Malcolm mounted. The same instant 
he lay on his back on the grass amidst a 
general laugh, loud on the part of mar- 
quis and lady, and subdued on that of 
the servants. But the next he was on 
his feet, and, the groom still holding the 
mare, in the saddle again : a little anger 
is a fine spur for the side of even an 
honest intent. This time he sat for half 
a minute, and then found himself once 
more on the grass. It was but once 
more : his mother earth had claimed him 
again only to complete his strength. A 
third time he mounted, and sat. As 
soon as she perceived it would be hard 
work to unseat him, the mare was 
quiet. 

“Bravo!’’ cried the marquis, giving 
him the letter, 

“Will there be an answer, my lord ?’’ 

“ Wait and see.’’ 

“ I s’ gar you pey for ’t, gien we come 
upon a broon rig atween this an’ Kirk- 
byres,’’ said Malcolm, addressing the 
mare, and rode away. 

Both the marquis and Lady Florimel, 
whose laughter had altogether ceased in 
the interest of watching the struggle, 
stood looking after him with a pleased 
expression, which as he vanished up the 
glen changed to a mutual glance and 
smile. 

“ He’s got good blood in him, however 
he came by it,’’ said the marquis. “ The 
country is more indebted to its nobility 
than is generally understood.’’ 

Otherwise indebted at least than Lady 
Florimel could gather from her father’s 
remark. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

KIRKBYRES. 

Malcolm felt considerably refreshed 
after his tussle with the mare and his 
victory over her, and much enjoyed his 
ride of ten miles. It was a cool autumn 
afternoon. A few of the fields were 
being reaped, one or two were crowded 
with stocks, while many crops of oats 
yet waved and rustled in various stages 
of vanishing green. On all sides kine 
were lowing ; over head rooks were caw- 
ing ; the sun was nearing the west, and 
in the hollows a thin mist came steaming 
up. Malcolm had never in his life been 
so far from the coast before : his road 
led southward into the heart of the 
country. 

The father of the late proprietor of 
Kirkbyres had married the heiress of 
Gersefell, an estate which marched with 
his own and was double its size, whence 
the lairdship was sometimes spoken of 
by the one name, sometimes by the other. 
The combined properties thus inherited 
by the late Mr. Stewart were of sufficient 
extent to justify him, although a plain 
man, in becoming a suitor for the hand 
of the beautiful daughter of a needy 
baronet in the neighborhood, with the 
already somewhat tarnished condition 
of whose reputation, having come into 
little contact with the world in which she 
moved, he was unacquainted. Quite un- 
expectedly she also, some years after their 
marriage, brought him a property of con- 
siderable extent — a fact which had doubt- 
less had its share in the birth and nour- 
ishment of her consuming desire to get 
the estates into her own management. 

Toward the end of his journey Mal- 
colm came upon a bare moorland waste 
on the long ascent of a low hill — very 
desolate, with not a tree or house within 
sight for two miles. A ditch, half full 
of dark water, bordered on each side of 
the road, which went straight as a rod 
through a black peat moss lying cheer- 
less and dreary on all sides — hardly less 
so where the sun gleamed from the sur- 
face of some stagnant pool filling a hole 
whence peats had been dug, or where a 
patch of cotton-grass waved white and 
lonely in the midst of the waste expanse. 


MALCOLM. 


At length, when he reached the top of 
the ridge, he saw the house of Kirkbyres 
below him, and, with a small modern 
lodge near by, a wooden gate showed 
the entrance to its grounds. Between the 
gate and the house he passed through a 
young plantation of larches and other 
firs for a quarter of a mile, and so came 
to an old wall with an iron gate in the 
middle of it, within which the old house, 
a gaunt, meagre building — a bare house 
in fact, relieved only by four small tur- 
rets or bartizans, one at each corner — 
lifted its gray walls, pointed gables and 
steep roof high into the pale blue air. 
He rode round the outer wall, seeking a 
back entrance, and arrived at a farm- 
yard, where a boy took his horse. Find- 
ing the kitchen door open, he entered, 
and having delivered his letter to a ser- 
vant-girl, sat down to wait the possible 
answer. 

In a few minutes she returned and 
requested him to follow her. This was 
more than he had calculated upon, but 
he obeyed at once. The girl led him 
along a dark passage and up a wind- 
ing stone stair, much worn, to a room 
richly furnished, and older-fashioned, he 
thought, than any room he had yet seen 
in Lossie House. 

On a settee, with her back to a win- 
dow, sat Mrs. Stewart, a lady tall and 
slender, with well-poised, easy carriage, 
and a motion that might have suggested 
the lithe grace of a leopard. She greet- 
ed him with a bend of the head and a 
smile, which, even in the twilight and 
her own shadow, showed a gleam of 
ivory, and spoke to him in a hard sweet 
voice, wherein an ear more experienced 
than Malcolm’s might have detected an 
accustomed intent to please. Although 
he knew nothing of the so-called world, 
and hence could recognize neither the 
Parisian air of her dress nor the indica- 
tions of familiarity with fashionable life 
prominent enough in her bearing, he yet 
could not fail to be at least aware of the 
contrast between her appearance and 
her surroundings. Yet less could the 
far stronger contrast escape him between 
the picture in his own mind of the mother 
of the mad laird and the woman before 

lO 


145 

him : he could not by any effort cause 
the two to coalesce. 

“You have had a long ride, Mr. Mac- 
Phail,’’ she said; “you must be tired.” 

“What wad tire me, mem?” returned 
Malcolm. “It’s a fine caller evenin’, an’ 

I hed ane o’ the marquis’s best mears to 
carry me.” 

“You’ll take a glass of wine, anyhow,” 
said Mrs. Stewart. “Will you oblige me 
by ringing the bell ?” 

“No, I thank ye, mem. The mear 
wad be better o’ a mou’fu’ o’ meal an’ 
watter, but I want naething mysel’.” 

A shadow passed over the lady’s face. 
She rose and rang the bell, then sat in 
silence until it was answered. 

“Bring the wine and cake,” she said; 
then turned to Malcolm : “Your master 
speaks very kindly of you. He seems to 
trust you thoroughly.” 

“ I’m verra glaid to hear ’t, mem, but 
he has never had muckle cause to trust 
or distrust me yet.” 

“He seems even to think that /might 
place equal confidence in you.” 

“ I dinna ken. I wadna hae ye lippen 
to me ower muckle,” said Malcolm. 

“You do not mean to contradict the 
good character your master gives you ?” 
said the lady, with a smile and a look 
right into his eyes. 

“ I wadna hae ye lippen till me afore 
ye had my word,” said Malcolm. 

“I may use my own judgment about 
that,” she replied with another winning 
smile. “But oblige me by taking a glass* 
of wine.” 

She rose and approached the decan- 
ters. 

“ ’Deed no, mem ! I’m no used till ’t,„ 
an’ it micht jummle my jeedgment,” 
said Malcolm, who had placed himself 
on the defensive from the first, jealous-* 
of his own conduct as being the friend. 
of the laird. 

At his second refusal the cloud again- 
crossed the lady’s brow, but her smile 
did not vanish. Pressing her hospitality 
no more, she resumed her seat. 

“My lord tells me,” she said, folding 
a pair of lovely hands on her lap, “that 
you see my poor unhappy boy some- 
times — ” 


146 


MALCOLM. 


"No sae dooms [absolutely] unhappy, 
mem,” said Malcolm ; but she went on 
without heeding the remark: 

" — And that you rescued him not long 
ago from the hands of ruffians.” 

Malcolm made no reply. 

"Everybody knows,” she continued 
after a slight pause, "what an unhappy 
mother I am. It is many years since I 
lost the loveliest infant ever seen, while 
my poor Stephen was left to be the 
mockery of every urchin in the street.” 

She sighed deeply, and one of the fair 
hands took a handkerchief from a work- 
table near. 

"No in Portlossie, mem,” said Mal- 
colm. "There’s verra feow o’ them so 
hard-hertit or so ill-mainnert. They’re 
used to seein’ him at the schuil, whaur 
he shaws himsel’ whiles ; and he’s a 
great favorite wi’ them, for he’s ane o’ 
the best craturs livin’.” 

"A poor witless, unmanageable being. 
He’s a dreadful grief to me,” said the 
widowed mother with a deep sigh. 

"A bairn could manage him,” said 
Malcolm in strong contradiction. 

"Oh, if I could but convince him of 
■my love! But he won’t give me a 
chance. He has an unaccountable 
dread of me, which makes him as well 
. as me wretched. It is a delusion which 
no argument can overcome, and seems 
indeed an essential part of his sad afflic- 
•tion. The more care and kindness he 
meeds, the less will he accept at my 

■ hands. I long to devote my life to him, 
.and he will not allow me. I should be 
but too happy to nurse him day and 
might. Ah, Mr. MacPhail, you little 
.know. a mother’s heart. Even if my 
beautiful boy had not been taken from 
,me, Stephen would still have been my 
idol, idiot as he is and will be as long as 
'he lives. And — ” 

"He’s nae idiot, mem,” interposed 
Malcolm. 

" — And just imagine,” she went on, 
"what a misery it must be to a widowed 
mother, poor companion as he would be 
at the best, to think of her boy roaming 

■ the country like a beggar! sleeping she 
doesn’t know where ! eating wretched 
'food! and — ” 


"Good parritch an’ milk, an’ brose an’ 
butter,” said Malcolm parenthetically — 
"whiles herrin’ an’ yallow baddies.” 

" It’s enough to break a mother’s heart. 
If I cou^d but persuade him to come 
home for a week, so as to have a chance 
with him ! But it’s no use trying : ill- 
disposed people have made mischief be- 
tween us, telling wicked lies and terrify- 
ing the poor fellow almost to death. It 
is quite impossible except I get some 
one to help me ; and there are so few 
who have any influence with him !” 

Malcolm thought she must surely have 
had chances enough before he ran away 
from her, but he could not help feeling 
softened toward her. 

"Supposin’ I was to get ye speech o’ 
’im, mem ?” he said. 

"That would not be of the slightest use. 
He is so prejudiced against me, he would 
only shriek and go into one of those 
horrible fits.” 

" I dinna see what’s to be dune, than,” 
said Malcolm. 

" I must have him brought here : there 
is no other way.” 

"An’ whaur wad be the guid o’ that, 
mem ? By yer ain shawin’, he wad rin 
oot o’ ’s verra body to win awa’ frae ye.” 

" I did not mean by force,” returned 
Mrs. Stewart. " Some one he has con- 
fidence in must come with him. Noth- 
ing else will give me a chance. He 
would trust you, now : your presence 
would keep him from being terrified — at 
his own mother, alas ! Through you he 
would learn to trust me ; and if a course 
of absolute indulgence did not bring him 
to live like other people — that of course 
is impossible — it might at least induce 
him to live at home, and cease to be a 
by-word to the neighborhood.” 

Her tone was so refined and her voice 
so pleading, her sorrow was so gentle, 
and she looked in the dimness, to Mal- 
colm’s imagination at least, so young* 
and handsome, that the strong castle of 
his prejudices was swaying as if built on 
reeds ; and had it not been that he was 
already the partisan of her son, and 
therefore in honor bound to give hhn 
the benefit of every doubt, he would cer- 
tainly have been gained over to work 


MALCOLM. 


147 


her will. He knew absolutely nothing 
against her — not even that she was the 
person he had seen in Mrs. Catanach’s 
company in the garret of Lossie House. 
But he steeled himself to distrust her, 
and held his peace. 

“ It is clear,” she resumed after a pause, 
‘‘that the intervention of some friend of 
both is the only thing that can be of the 
smallest use. I know you are a friend 
of his — a- true one — and I do not see why 
you should not be a friend of mine as 
well. Will you be my friend too ?” 

She rose as she said the words, and, 
approaching him, bent on him out of 
the shadow the full strength of eyes 
whose light had not yet begun to pale 
before the dawn we call death, and held 
out a white hand glimmering in the dusk : 
she knew only too well the power of a 
still fine woman of any age over a youth 
of twenty. 

Malcolm, knowing nothing about it, 
yet felt hers, and was on his.guard. He 
rose also, but did not take her hand. 

‘‘I have had only too much reason,” 
she added, ‘‘to distrust some who, unlike 
you, professed themselves eager to serve 
me ; but I know neither Lord Lossie nor 
you will play me false.” 

She took his great rough hand between 
her two soft palms, and for a moment 
Malcolm was tempted — not to betray his 
friend, but to simulate a yielding sympa- 
thy, in order to come at the heart of 
her intent, and, should it prove false, to 
foil it the more easily. But the honest 
nature of him shrunk from deception, 
even where the object of it was good: 
he was not at liberty to use falsehood for 
the discomfiture of the false even. A 
pretended friendship was of the vilest 
of despicable things, and the more holy 
the end the less fit to be used for the 
compassing of it — least of all in the 
cause of a true friendship. 

‘‘I canna help ye, mem,” he said : ‘‘I 
daurna. I hae sic a regaird for yer son 
’at afore I wad du onything to hairm 
him I wad hae my twa ban’s chappit frae 
the shackle-bane.” 

‘‘Surely, my dear Mr. MacPhail,” re- 
turned the lady in her most persuasive 
tones and with her sweetest smile, ‘‘ you 


cannot call it harming a poor idiot to re- 
store him to the care of his own mother ?” 

‘‘That’s as it turnt oot,” rejoined Mal- 
colm. ‘‘ But I’m sure o’ ae thing, mem, 
an’ that is, ’at he’s no sae muckle o’ an 
eediot as some fowk wad hae him.” 

Mrs. Stewart’s face fell. She turned 
from him, and going back to her seat 
hid her face in her handkerchief. 

‘‘ I’m afraid,” she said sadly, after a 
moment, ‘‘ I must give up my last hope : 
you are not disposed to be friendly to 
me, Mr. MacPhail. You too have been 
believing hard things of me.” 

‘‘That’s true, but no frae hearsay 
alane,” returned Malcolm.’ ‘‘The luik 
o’ the puir fallow whan he but hears the 
chance word mither ’s a sicht po to be 
forgotten. He grips his lugs atween ’s 
twa ban’s an’ rins like a colley wi’ a 
pan at ’s tail. That cudna comedo’ nae- 
thing.” 

Mrs. Stewart hid her face on the cush- 
ioned arm of the settee and sobbed. A 
moment after she sat erect again, but 
languid and red-eyed, saying, as if with 
sudden resolve, ‘‘I will tell you all I 
know about it, and then you can judge 
for yourself. When he was a very small 
child I took him for advice to the best 
physicians in London and Paris : all ad- 
vised a certain operation which had to 
be performed for consecutive months at 
intervals of a few days. Though pain- 
ful it was simple, yet of such a nature 
that no one was so fit to attend to it as 
his mother. Alas ! instead of doing him 
any good, it has done me the worst in- 
jury in the world: my child hates me.” 

Again she hid her face on the settee. 

The explanation was plausible enough, 
and the grief of the mother surely appar- 
ent. Malcolm could not but be touched : 
‘‘ It’s no ’at I’m no willin’ to be your 
freen’, mem ; but I’m yer son’s freen’ 
a’ready, an’ gien he was to hear ony- 
thing ’at gart him mislippen till me, it 
wad gang to my hert.” 

‘‘Then you can judge what I feel,” 
said the lady. 

‘‘Gien it wad hale your hert to hurt 
mine, I wad think aboot it, mem, but 
gien it hurtit a’ three o’ ’s, and did guid 
to nane, it wad be a misfit a’thegither. 


148 


MALCOLM. 


ril du naething till I’m doonricht sure 
it’s the pairt o’ a freen’.” 

“That’s just what makes you the only 
fit person to help me that I know. If I 
were to employ people in the affair they 
might be rough with the poor fellow.’’ 

“Like eneuch, mem,’’ assented Mal- 
colm, while the words put him afresh on 
his guard. 

“But I might be driven to it,’’ she 
added. 

Malcolm responded with an unuttered 
vow. 

“ It might become necessary to use 
force, whereas you could lead him with 
a word.’’ 

“Na, I’m naither sic witch nor sic 
traitor.’’ 

“Where would be the treachery when 
you knew it would be for his good ?’’ 

“That’s jist what I dinna ken, mem,’’ 
retorted Malcolm. “ Luik ye here, mem,’’ 
he continued, rousing himself to venture 
an appeal to the mother’s heart; “here’s 
a man it has pleased God to mak no 
freely like ither fowk. His min’, though 
cawpable o’ a hantle mair nor a body 
wad think ’at didna ken him sae weel as 
I do, is certainly weyk — though maybe 
the weykness lies mair i’ the tongue than 
i’ the brain o’ ’im, efter a’ — an’ he’s been 
sair frichtit wi’ some guideship or ither ; 
the upshot o’t a’ bein’ ’at he’s unco tim- 
orsome, and ready to bursten himsel’ 
rinnin’ whan there’s nane pursuin’. But 
he’s the gentlest o’ craturs — a doonricht 
gentleman, mem, gien ever there was 
ane — an’ that kin’ly wi’ a’ cratur, baith 
man an’ beast ! A verra bairn cud guide 
him ony gait but ane.’’ 

“Anywhere but to his mother,’’ ex- 
claimed Mrs. Stewart, pressing her hand- 
kerchief to her eyes and sobbing as she 
spoke. “There is a child he is very fond 
of, I am told,’’ she added, recovering 
herself. 

“ He likes a’ bairns,’’ returned Mal- 
colm, “an’ they’re maistly a’ freen’ly wi’ 
him. But there’s but jist ae thing ’at 
maks life endurable till ’im. He suffers 
a hantle {a great deal) wi that puir back 
o’ his, an’ wi’ his breath tu whan he’s 
frichtit, for his hert gangs loupin like a 
sawmon in a bag-net. An’ he suffers a 


hantle, forbye, in his puir feeble min’, 
tryin’ to unnerstan’ the guid things ’at 
fowk tells him, an’ jaloosin’ it’s his ain 
wyte ’at he disna unnerstan’ them bet- 
ter ; an’ whiles he thinks himsel’ the 
child o’ sin and wrath, an’ that Sawtan 
has some special propriety in him, as the 
carritchis says — ’’ 

“But,’’ interrupted the lady hurriedly, 
“you were going to tell me the one com- 
fort he has.’’ 

“ It’s his leeberty, mem — jist his'leeb- 
erty — to gang whaur he lists like the 
win’ ; to turn his face whaur he wull i’ 
the mornin’, an’ back again at nicht 
gien he likes ; to wan’er — ’’ 

“Back where?" interrupted the moth- 
er, a little too eagerly. 

“Whaur he likes, mem: I cudna say 
whaur wi’ ony certainty. But aih ! he 
likes to hear the sea moanin’ an’ watch 
the stars sheenin’. There’s a sicht o’ 
oondevelopit releegion in him, as Maister 
Graham says ; an’ I div not believe ’at 
the Lord ’ll see him wranged mair nor ’s 
for ’s guid. But it’s my belief, gien ye 
took the leeberty fra the puir cratur, ye 
wad kill him.’’ 

“Then you won’t help me ?’’ she cried 
despairingly. “They tell me you are an 
orphan yourself, and yet you will not 
take pity on a childless mother — worse 
than childless, for I had the loveliest boy 
once. He would be about your age now, 
and I have never had any comfort in life 
since I lost him. Give me my son, and 
I will bless you, love you.’’ 

As she spoke she rose, and, approach- 
ing him gently, laid a hand on his shoul- 
der. Malcolm trembled, but stood his 
mental ground. 

“’Deed, mem, I can an’ wull promise 
ye naething,’’ he said. “Are ye to play 
a man fause ’cause he’s less able to tak 
care o’ himsel’ than ither fowk ? Gien 
I war sure ’at ye cud mak it up, an’ ’at 
he wad be happy wi’ ye efterhin, it micht 
be anither thing; but excep’ ye garred 
him ye cudna get him to bide lang eneuch 
for ye to \xy \ an’ syne {even then) he 
wad dee afore ye hed convenced him. 
I doobt, mem, ye hae lost yer chance wi’ 
him, and maun du yer best to be con- 
tent withoot him. I’ll promise ye this 


MALCOLM. 


muckle, gien ye like : I s’ tell him what 
ye hae said upo’ the subjec’.” 

“Much good that will be !’’ replied the 
lady, with ill-concealed scorn. 

“Ye think he wadna unnerstan’ ’t, but 
he unnerstan’s wonnerfu’.” 

“ And you would come again, and tell 
me what he said ?’’ she murmured, with 
the eager persuasiveness of reviving 
hope. 

“ Maybe ay, maybe no — I winna prom- 
ise. Hae ye ony answer to sen’ back to 
my lord’s letter, mem ?’’ 

“ No ; I cannot write ; I cannot even 
think. You have made me so miserable.’’ 

Malcolm lingered. 

“Go, go,’’ said the lady dejectedly. 
“ Tell your master I am not well. I will 
write to-morrow. If you hear anything 
of my poor boy, do take pity upon me 
and come and tell me.’’ 

The stififer partisan Malcolm appeared 
the more desirable did it seem in Mrs. 
Stewart’s eyes to gain him over to her 
side. Leaving his probable active hos- 
tility out of the question, she saw plain- 
ly enough that, if he were called on to 
give testimony as to the laird’s capacity, 
his evidence would pull strongly against 
her plans ; while if the interests of such 
a youth were wrapped up in them, that 
fact in itself would prejudice most people 
in favor of them. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE BLOW. 

“Well, Malcolm,’’ said his lordship 
when the youth reported himself, “how’s 
Mrs. Stewart?’’ 

“No ower weel pleased, my lord,’’ an- 
swered Malcolm. 

“What! you haven’t been refusing 
to — ?’’ 

“ ’Deed hev I, my lord.’’ 

“Tut! tut! Have you brought me 
any message from her .?’’ 

He spoke rather angrily. 

“ Nane but that she wasna weel, an’ 
wad write the morn.’’ 

The marquis thought for a few mo- 
ments : “If I make a personal^ matter 
of' it, MacPhail — I mean, you won’t 


149 

refuse me if I ask a personal favor of 
you ?’’ 

“I maun ken what it is afore I say 
onything, my lord.’’ 

“ You may trust me not to require any- 
thing you couldn’t undertake.’’ 

“There micht be twa opinions, my 
lord.’’ s 

“You young boor ! What is the world 
coming to ? By Jove !’’ 

“As far ’s I can gang wi’ a clean con- 
science, I’ll -gang — no ae step ayont,’’ 
said Malcolm. 

“You mean to say your judgment is a 
safer guide than mine ?’’ 

“ No, my lord : I micht weel follow yer 
lordship’s jeedgment, but gien there be 
a conscience i’ the affair, it’s my ain con- 
science I’m bun’ to follow, an’ no yer 
lordship’s or ony ither man’s. Suppose 
the thing ’at seemed richt to yer lordship 
seemed wrang to me, what wad ye hae 
me du than ?’’ 

“ Do as I told you and lay the blame 
on me.’’ 

“ Na, my lord, that winna hand : I 
bude to du what I thocht richt, an’ lay 
the blame upo’ nobody, whatever cam 
o’ ’t.’’ 

“You young hypocrite! Why didn’t 
you tell me you meant to set up for a 
saint before I took you into my service ?’’ 

“’Cause I had nae sic intention, my 
lord. Surely a body micht ken himsel’ 
nae sant an’ yet like to hand his ban’s 
clean.’’ 

“What did Mrs. Stewart tell you she 
wanted of you?’’ asked the marquis, al- 
most fiercely, after a moment’s silence. 

“She wantit me to get the puir laird to 
gang back till her ; but I sair misdoobt, 
for a’ her fine words, it’s a closed door, 
gien it bena a lid, she wad hae upon 
him ; an’ I wad suner be hangt nor hae 
a thoom i’ that haggis.” 

“Why should you doubt what a lady 
tells you ?” 

“ I wadna be ower ready, but I hae 
hard things, ye see, an’ bude to be upo’ 
my gaird.” 

“Well, I suppose, as you are a per- 
sonal friend of the idiot’s — ” 

His lordship had thought to sting him, 
and paused for a moment, but Malcolm’s 


MALCOLM. 


ISC' 

manner revealed nothing except waiting 
watchfulness. 

“ — I must employ some one else to 
get a hold of the fellow for her,” he 
concluded. 

‘‘Ye winna du that, my lord,” cried 
Malcolm in a tone of entreaty, but his 
master chose to misunderstand him. 

‘‘Who’s to prevent me, I should like 
to know ?” he said. 

Malcolm accepted the misinterpreta- 
tion involved, and answered, but calm- 
ly, ‘‘ Me, my lord : / wull. At ony rate, 
I s’ du my best.” 

‘‘Upon my word !” exclaimed Lord 
Lossie, ‘‘you presume sufficiently on my 
good-nature, young man !” 

‘‘ Hear me ae moment, my lord,” re- 
turned Malcolm. ‘‘I’ve been turnin’ ’t 
ower i’ my min’, an’ I see, plain as the 
.daylicht, that I’m bun’, bein’ yer lord- 
ship’s servan’ an’ trustit by yer lordship, 
to say that to yersel’ the whilk I was 
nowise bun’ to say to Mistress Stewart. 
Sae, at the risk o’ angerin’ ye, I maun 
tell yer lordship, wi’ a’ respec’, ’at gien 
I can help it there sail no han’, gentle 
or semple, be laid upo’ the laird against 
his ain wull.” 

The marquis was getting tired of the 
contest. He was angry too, and none 
the less that he felt Malcolm was in the 
right. 

‘‘ Go to the devil, you booby !” he said, 
even more in impatience than in wrath. 

‘‘I’m thinkin’ I needna budge,” re- 
torted Malcolm, angry also. 

‘‘What do you mean by that inso- 
lence ?” 

‘‘ I mean, my lord, that to gang will 
be to gang frae him. He canna be far 
frae yer lordship’s lug this meenute.” 

All the marquis’s gathered annoyance 
broke out at last in rage. He started 
from his chair, made three strides to 
Malcolm and struck him in the face. 

Malcolm staggered back till he was 
brought up by the door. ‘‘ Hoot, my 
lord !” he exclaimed as he sought his 
blue cotton handkerchief, ‘‘ye sudna hae 
dune that : ye’ll blaud the carpet.” 

‘‘You precious idiot!” cried his lord- 
ship, already repenting the deed, ‘‘ why 
didn’t you defend yourself?” 


‘‘ The quarrel was my ain, an’ I cud 
du as I likit, iny lord.” 

‘‘And why should you like to take a 
blow ? Not to lift a hand, even to de- 
fend yourself!” said the marquis, vexed 
both with Malcolm and with himself. 

‘‘Because I saw I was i’ the wrang, 
my lord. The quarrel was o’ my ain 
makin’ : I hed no richt to lowse my 
temper an’ be impident. Sae I didna 
daur defen’ mysel’. And I beg yer lord- 
ship’s pardon. But dinna ye du me the 
wrang to imagine, my lord, ’cause I took 
a flewet [blow] in good pairt whan I ken 
mysel’ i’ the wrang, ’at that’s hoo I wad 
cairry mysel’ gien ’twas for the puir laird. 
Faith ! I s’ gar ony man ken a differ 
there !” 

‘‘Go along with you, and don’t show 
yourself till you’re fit to be seen. I hope 
it ’ll be a lesson to you.” 

‘‘It wull, my lord,” said Malcolm. 
‘‘But,” he added, ‘‘there was nae occa- 
sion to gie me sic a dirdum : a word wad 
had pitten me mair i’ the wrang.” 

So saying, he left the room with his 
handkerchief to his face. 

The marquis was really sorry for the 
blow, chiefly because Malcolm, without 
a shadow of pusillanimity, had taken it 
so quietly. Malcolm would, however, 
have had very much more the worse of 
it had he defended himself, for his mas- 
ter had been a bruiser in his youth, and 
neither his left hand nor his right arm 
had yet forgot its cunning so far as to 
leave him less than a heavy overmatch 
for one unskilled, whatever his strength 
or agility. 

For some time after he was gone the 
marquis paced up and down the room, 
feeling strangely and unaccountably un- 
comfortable. ‘‘ The great lout !” he kept 
saying to himself, ‘‘why did he let me 
strike him ?” 

Malcolm went to his grandfather’s cot- 
tage. In passing the window he peeped 
in. The old man was sitting with his 
bagpipes on his knees, looking troubled. 
When he entered the old man held out 
his arms to him. 

‘‘Tere’ll pe something cone wrong 
with you, Malcolm, my son !” he cried. 
‘‘ You’ll pe hafing a hurt ! She knows it, 


MALCOLM. 


she has it within her, though she couldn’t 
chust see it. Where is it ?” 

As he spoke he proceeded to feel his 
head and face. 

“ God pless her sowl ! you are plood- 
ing, Malcolm !” he cried the same mo- 
ment. 

“It’s naething to greit aboot, daddy. 
It’s hardly mair nor the flype o’ a saw- 
' mon’s tail.’’ 

“ Put who ’ll pe tone it ?’’ asked Dun- 
can angrily. 

“Ow, the maistergae me a bit flewet,’’ 
answered Malcolm with indifference. 

“Where is he ?’’ cried the piper, rising 
in wrath. “Tak her to him, Malcolm. 
She will stap him. She will pe killing 
him. . She will trive her turk into his 
wicked pody.’’ 

“Na, na, daddy,’’ said Malcolm: “we 
hae hed eneuch o’ dirks a’ready.’’ 

“ Then you haf tone it yourself, then, 
Malcolm ? My prave poy !’’ 

“No, daddy: I took my licks like a 
man, for I deserved them.’’ 

“ Deserfed to pe peaten, Malcolm ? — 
to pe peaten like a tog ? Ton’t tell her 
that ! Ton’t preak her heart, my poy.” 

“ It wasna that muckle, daddy. I only 
tolled him Auld Horny was at ’s lug.” 

“And she’ll make no toubt it was 
true,” cried Duncan, emerging sudden 
from his despondency. 

“Ay, sae he was, only I had no richt 
to say ’t.” 

“ Put you striked him pack, Malcolm ? 
Ton’t say you tidn’t gif him pack his 
plow. Ton’t tell it to her, Malcolm.” 

“ Hoo cud I hit my maister, an’ mysel’ 
i’ the wrang, daddy ?” 

“Then she ’ll must to it herself,” said 
Duncan quietly, and with the lips com- 
pressed of calm decision turned toward 
the door, to get his dirk from the next 
room. 

“ Bide ye still, daddy,” said Malcolm, 
laying hold of his arm, “an’ sit ye doon 
till ye hear a’ aboot it first.” 

Duncan yielded, for the sake of better 
instruction in the circumstances, over 
the whole of which Malcolm now went. 
But before he came to a close he had 
skillfully introduced and enlarged upon 
the sorrows and sufferings and dangers 


151 

of the laird, so as to lead the old man 
away from the quarrel, dwelling especial- 
ly on the necessity of protecting Mr. 
Stewart from the machinations of his 
mother. Duncan listened to all he said 
with marked sympathy. 

“An’ gien the markis daur to cross me 
in ’t,” said Malcolm at. last as he ended, 
“lat him leuk till himsel’, for it’s no at a 
buffet or twa I wad stick, gien the ptfir 
laird was intill ’t.” 

This assurance, indicative of a full 
courageous intent on the part of his grand- 
son, for whose manliness he was jealous, 
greatly served to quiet Duncan, and he 
consented at last to postpone all quit- 
tance, in the hope of Malcolm’s having 
the opportunity of a righteous quarrel 
for proving himself no coward. His 
wrath gradually died away, until at last he 
begged his boy to take his pipes, that he 
might give him a lesson. Malcolm made 
the attempt, but found it impossible to 
fill the bag with his swollen and cut lips, 
and had to beg his grandfather to play 
to him instead. He gladly consented, 
and played until bedtime, when, having 
tucked him up, Malcolm went quietly to 
his own room, avoiding supper and the 
eyes of Mrs. Courthope together. He 
fell asleep in a moment, and spent a 
night of perfect oblivion, dreamless of 
wizard lord or witch lady. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE CUrrER. 

Some days passed, during which Mal- 
colm contrived that no one should see 
him : he stole down to his grandfat^ier’s 
early in the morning, and returned to his 
own room at night. Duncan told the 
people about that he was not very well,, 
but would be all right in a day or two. 
It was a time of jubilation to the bard, 
and he cheered his grandson’s retire- 
ment with music, and with wild stories 
of highland lochs and moors, chanted 
or told. Malcolm’s face was now much 
better, though the signs of the blow were* 
still plain enough upon it, when a mes- 
senger came one afternoon to summon - 
him to the marquis’s presence. 


152 


MALCOLM. 


“Where have you been sulking all this 
time ?’’ was his master’s greeting. 

“I havena been sulkin’, my lord,’’ an- 
swered Malcolm. “Yer lordship tauld 
me to haud oot o’ the gait till I was fit 
to be seen, an’ no a sowl has set an ee 
upo’ me till this verra moment ’at yer 
lordship has me in yer ain.’’ 

“Where have you been, then?’’ 

•“!’ my ain room at nicht, and doon 
at my gran’father’s as lang ’s fowk was 
aboot — wi’ a bit dauner {strolt) up the 
burn i’ the mirk.’’ 

“You couldn’t encounter the shame of 
being seen with such a face, eh ?’’ 

“ It micht ha’ been thocht a disgrace 
to the tane or the tither o’ ’s, my lord — 
maybe to baith.’’ 

“ If you don’t learn to curb that tongue 
of yours, it will bring you to worse.’’ 

“My lord, I confessed my faut and I 
pat up wi’ the blow. But if it hadna 
been that I was i’ the wrang — weel, 
things micht hae differt.’’ 

“ Hold your tongue, I tell you ! You’re 
an honest, good fellow, and I’m sorry I 
struck you. There!’’ 

“ I thank yer lordship.’’ 

“I sent for you because I’ve just heard 
from Aberdeen that the boat is on her 
way round. You must be ready to take 
charge of her the moment she arrives.’’ 

“ I wull be that, my lord. It doesna 
shuit me at a’ to be sae lang upo’ the 
solid : I’m like a cowt upon a toll-ro’d.’’ 

The next morning he got a telescope, 
and taking with him his dinner of bread 
and cheese, and a book in his pocket, 
went up to the Temple of the Winds, to 
look out for the boat. Every few min- 
utes he swept the offing, but morning and 
..afternoon passed, and she did not appear. 
'The day’s monotony was broken only by 
.a call from Demon. Malcolm looked 
landward, and spied his mistress below 
.amongst the trees, but she never looked 
iin his direction. 

He had just become aware of the first 
dusky breath of the twilight, when a tiny 
sloop appeared rounding the Deid Heid, 
as they called the promontory which 
closed in the bay on the east. The sun 
was setting, red and large, on the other 
side of the Scaurnose, and filled her 


white sails with a rosy dye as she came 
stealing round in a fair soft wind. The 
moon hung over her thin and pale and 
ghostly, with hardly shine enough to 
show that it was indeed she and not the 
forgotten scrap of a torn-up cloud. As 
she passed the point and turned toward 
the harbor, the warm amethystine hue 
suddenly vanished from her sails, and 
she looked white and cold, as if the sight 
of the Death’s Head had scared the 
blood out of her. 

“It’s hersel’!’’ cried Malcolm in de- 
light. “Aboot the size o’ a muckle her- 
rin’-boat, but nae mair like ane than 
Lady Florimel ’s like Meg Partan. It’ll 
be jist gran’ to hae a cratur sae near 
leevin’ to guide an’ tak yer wull o’ 1 I 
had nae idea she was gaein’ to be ony- 
thing like sae bonny. I’ll no be fit to 
manage her in a squall, though. I maun 
hae anither han’. An’ I winna hae a 
laddie, aither. It maun be a grown man, 
or I winna tak in han’ to haud her abune 
the watter. I wull no. I ’s hae Blue 
Peter himsel’ gien I can get him. Eh ! 
jist luik at her, wi’ her bit gaff-tappip 
set, and her jib an’ a’, booin’ an’ booin’, 
an’ cornin’ on ye as gran’ ’s ony born 
leddy !’’ 

He shut up the telescope, ran down 
the hill, unlocked the private door at its 
foot, and in three or four minutes was 
waiting her on the harbor-wall. 

She was a little cutter, and a lovely 
show to eyes capable of the harmonies of 
shape and motion. She came walking 
in, as the Partan, whom Malcolm found 
on the pierhead, remarked, “like a leddy 
closin’ her parasol as she cam.’’ Mal- 
colm jumped on board, and the two men 
who had brought her round gave up their 
charge. 

She was full -decked, with a dainty 
little cabin. Her planks were almost 
white : there was not a board in her off 
which one might not, as the Partan ex- 
panded the common phrase, “ait his 
parritch an’ never fin’ a mote in ’s mou’.’’ 
Her cordage was all so clean, her stand- 
ing rigging so taut, everything so ship- 
shape, that Malcolm was in raptures. If 
the burn had only been navigable, so 
that he might have towed the graceful 


MALCOLM. 


creature home and laid her up under the 
very walls of the House ! It would have 
perfected the place in his eyes. He made 
her snug for the night and went to report 
her arrival. 

Great was Lady Florimel’s jubilation. 
She would have set out on a “coasting 
voyage,” as she called it, the very next 
day, but her father listened to Malcolm. 

“Ye see, my lord,” said Malcolm, “I 
maun ken a’ aboot her afore I daur tak 
ye oot in her. An’ I canna unnertak’ to 
manage her my lane. Ye maun jist gie 
me anither man wi’ me.” 

“Get one,” said the marquis. 

Early in the morning, therefore, Mal- 
colm went to Scaurnose, and found Blue 
Peter amongst his nets. He could spare 


IS3 

a day or two, and would join him. They 
returned together, got the cutter into the 
offing, and with a westerly breeze tried 
her every way. She answered her helm 
with readiness, rose as light as a bird, 
made a good board, and seemed every 
way a safe boat. 

“ She’s the bonniest craft ever lainch- 
ed!” said Malcolm, ending a description 
of her behavior and qualities rather too 
circumstantial for his master to follow. 

They were to make their first trip the 
next morning — eastward, if the wind 
should hold, landing at a certain ancient 
ruin on the coast two or three miles from 
Portlossie. 




f > 




, . I,. . I 


-V-ZZZ. 


CHAPTER XXXVIll. 

. THE TWO DOGS. 

L ady FLORIMEL’S fancy was so 
full of the expected pleasure that 
she woke soon after dawn. She rose 
and anxiously drew aside a curtain of her 
window. The day was one of God’s 
odes written for men. Would that the 
days of our human autumn were as 
calmly grand, as gorgeously hopeful, as 
the days that lead the aging year down 
to the grave of winter! If our white 
hairs were sunlit from behind like those 
radiance - bordered clouds ; if our air 
were as pure as this when it must be as 
cold ; if the falling at last of longest- 
cherished hopes did but, like that of the 
forest leaves, let in more of the sky, more 
of the infinite possibilities of the region 
of truth, which is the matrix of fact, — 
we should go marching down the hill 
of life like a battered but still bannered 
army on its way home. But, alas I how 
often we rot, instead of march, toward 
the grave I “ If he be not rotten before 
he die,” said Hamlet’s absolute grave- 
digger. If the year was dying around 
Lady Florimel, as she looked, like a 
deathless sun from a window of the 
skies, it was dying at least with dignity. 

The sun was still reveling in the gift 
of himself. A thin blue mist went up to 
greet him, like the first of the smoke 
from the altars of the morning. The 
field lay yellow below; the rich colors 
of decay hung heavy on the woods, and 
seemed to clothe them as with the trap- 
pings of a majestic sorrow ; but the spi- 
der-webs sparkled with dew and the gos- 
samer films floated thick in the level 
sunbeams. It was a great time for the 
spiders, those visible Deaths of the in- 
sect race. 

The sun, like a householder leaving 
his house for a time, was burning up a 
thousand outworn things before he went ; 
hence the smoke of the dying hearth of 

154 


summer was going up to the heavens ; 
but there was a heart of hope left, for, 
when farthest away, the sun is never 
gone, and the snow is the earth’s blanket 
against the frost. But, alas I it was not 
Lady Florimel who thought these things. 
Looking over her shoulder, and seeing 
both what she can and what she cannot 
see, I am having a think to myself. 

“Which it is an offence to utter in the 
temple of Art,” cry the critics. 

Not against Art, I think ; but if it be 
an offence to the worshiper of Art, let 
him keep silence before his goddess:, for 
me, I am a sweeper of the floors in the 
temple of Life, -and his goddess is my 
mare and shall go in the dust-cart. If I 
find a jewel as I sweep, I will fasten it on 
the curtains of the doors, nor heed if it 
should break the fall of a fold of the 
drapery. 

Below Lady Florimel’s oriel window, 
under the tall bridge, the burn lay dark 
in a deep pool, with a slow-revolving ed- 
dy, in which one leaf, attended by a streak 
of white froth, was performing solemn gy- 
rations. Away to the north the great sea 
was merry with waves and spotted with 
their broken crests : heaped against the 
horizon, it looked like a blue hill dotted 
all over with feeding sheep. But to-day 
she never thought the waters were 
so busy — to what end they foamed and 
ran, flashing their laughter in the face 
of the sun : the mood of Nature was in 
harmony with her own, and she felt no 
need to discover any higher import in its 
merriment. How could she, when she 
sought no higher import in her own — 
had not as yet once suspected that every 
human gladness, even to the most tran- 
sient flicker of delight, is the reflex — from 
a potsherd, it may be — but of an eternal 
sun of joy ? Stay, let me pick up the 
gem : every faintest glimmer, all that is 
not utter darkness, is from the shining 
face of the Father of lights. Not a 


MALCOLM. 


breath stirred the ivy leaves about her 
window, but out there on the wide blue 
the breezes were frolicking, and in the 
harbor the new boat must be tugging 
to get free. She dressed in haste, called 
her stag-hound, and set out the nearest 
way — that is, by the town-gate — for the 
harbor. She must make acquaintance 
with her new plaything. 

Mrs. Catanach in her nightcap look- 
ed from her upper window as she passed, 
like a great spider from the heart of its 
web, and nodded significantly after her, 
with a look and a smile such as might 
mean that for all her good looks she 
might have the heartache some day. 
But she was to have the first herself, for 
that moment her ugly dog, now and al- 
ways with the look of being fresh from 
an ash-pit, rushed from somewhere and 
laid hold of Lady Florimel’s dress, fright- 
ening her so that she gave a cry. In- 
stantly her own dog, which had been 
loitering behind, came tearing up, five 
lengths at a bound, and descended like 
an angel of vengeance upon the offen- 
sive animal, which would have fled, but 
found it too late. Opening his huge jaws. 
Demon took him across the flanks, much 
larger than his own, as if he had been a 
rabbit. His howls of agony brought Mrs. 
Catanach out in her petticoats. She flew 
at the hound, which Lady Florimel was 
in vain attempting to drag from the cur, 
and seized him by the throat. 

“Take care! he is dangerous,” cried 
the girl. 

Finding she had no power upon him, 
Mrs. Catanach forsook him, and in de- 
spairing fury rushed at his mistress. 
Demon saw it with one flaming eye — 
left the cur, which, howling hideously, 
dragged his hind quarters after him into 
the house, and sprang at the woman. 
Then indeed was Lady Florimel terrified, 
for she knew the savage nature of the 
animal when roused. Truly, with his 
eyes on fire as now, his long fangs bared, 
the bristles on his back erect and his 
moustache sticking straight out, he might 
well be believed, much as civilization 
might have done for him, a wolf after all. 
His mistress threw herself between them 
and flung her arms tight round his neck. 


155 

“Run, woman! run for your life!” she 
shrieked. “ I can’t hold him long.” 

Mrs. Catanach fled, cowed by terror. 
Her huge legs bore her huge body, a 
tragi-comic spectacle, across the street to 
her open door. She had hardly vanish- 
ed, flinging it to behind her, when De- 
mon broke from his mistress, and, going 
at the door as if launched from a cata- 
pult, burst it open and disappeared also. 

Lady Florimel gave a shriek of horror 
and darted after him. 

The same moment the sound of Dun- 
can’s pipes as he issued from the town- 
gate, at which he always commenced in- 
stead of ending his reveille now, reached 
her, and bethinking herself of her inabil- 
ity to control the hound, she darted again 
from the cottage and flew to meet him, 
crying aloud, “ Mr. MacPhail ! Duncan ! 
Duncan ! stop your pipes and come here 
directly.” 

“And who may pe calling me ?” asked 
Duncan, who had not thoroughly distin- 
guished the voice through the near clam- 
or of his instrument. 

She laid her hand trembling with ap- 
prehension on his arm, and began pull- 
ing him along. “ It’s me — Lady Flori- 
mel,” she said. “Come here directly. 
Demon has got into a house and is wor- 
rying a woman.” 

“God haf mercy!” cried Duncan. 
“Take her pipes, my laty, for fear any- 
thing paad should happen to them.” 

She led him hurriedly to the door. 
But ere he had quite crossed the thresh- 
old he shivered and drew back. “This 
is an efil house,” he said. “She ’ll not 
can CO in.” 

A great floundering racket was going 
on above, mingled with growls and 
shrieks, but there was no howling. 

“Call the dog, then. He will mind 
you, perhaps,” she cried — knowing what 
a slow business an argument with Dun- 
can was — and flew to the stair. 

“Temon! Temon!” cried Duncan with 
agitated voice. 

Whether the dog thought his friend 
w’as in trouble next, I cannot tell, but 
down he came that instant, with a single 
bound from the top of the stair, right 
I over his mistress’s head as she was run- 


156 


MALCOLM. 


ning up, and leaping out to Duncan, laid 
a paw upon each of his shoulders, pant- 
ing with out-lolled tongue. 

But the piper staggered back, pushing 
the dog from him. “It is plood!” he 
cried — “ta efil woman’s plood !’’ 

“ Keep him out, Duncan dear,” said 
Lady Florimel. “ I will go and see. 
There ! he’ll be up again if you don’t' 
mind.” 

Very reluctant, yet obedient, the bard 
laid hold of the growling animal by the 
collar ; and Lady Florimel was just turn- 
ing to finish her ascent of the stair and 
see what dread thing had come to pass, 
when, to her great joy, she heard Mal- 
colm’s voice calling from the farther end 
of the street, “ Hey, daddy, what’s hap- 
pened ’at I dinna hear the pipes ?” 

She rushed out, the pipes dangling 
from her hand, so that the drone trailed 
on the ground behind her. “ Malcolm ! 
Malcolm!” she cried; and he was by 
her side in scarcely more time than De- 
mon would have taken. 

Hurriedly and rather incoherently she 
told him what had taken place. He 
sprang up the stair, and she followed. 

In the front garret — with a dormer 
window looking down into the street — 
stood Mrs. Catanach facing the door, 
with such a malignant rage in her coun- 
tenance that it looked demoniacal. Her 
dog lay at her feet with his throat torn 
out. 

As soon as she saw Malcolm she broke 
into a fury of vulgar imprecation — most 
of it quite outside the pale of artistic 
record. 

“ Hoots 1 for shame. Mistress Cata- 
nach I” he cried. “ Here’s my lady ahin’ 
me, bearin’ ilka word.” 

“ Deil stap her lugs wi’ brunstane ! 
What but a curse wad she hae frae me ? 

I sweir by God I s’ gar her pey for this, 
or my name’s no — ” She stopped sud- 
denly. 

“ I thocht as muckle,” said Malcolm 
with a keen look. 

“Ye’ll think twise, ye deil’s buckie, or 
ye think richt ! Wha are ye to think ? 
What sud my name be but Bawby Cata- 
nach ? Ye’re unco upsettin’ sin’ ye turn- 
ed my leddy’s flunky ! Sorrow tak ye 


baith 1 My dawtit Beauty worriet by that 
hell-tyke o’ hers I” 

“Gien ye gang on like that, the markis 
’ll hae ye drummed oot o’ the toon or 
twa days be ower,” said Malcolm. 

“ Wull he, then ?” she returned with a 
confident sneer, showing all the teeth 
she had left. “Ye’ll be far ben wi’ the 
markis, nae doobt! An’ yon donnert 
auld deevil ye ca’ yer gran’father ’ill be 
fain eneuch to be drummer. I’ll sweir. 
Care’s my case I” 

“My leddy, she’s ower ill-tongued for 
you to hearken till,” said Malcolm, turn- 
ing to Florimel, who stood in the door 
white and trembling. “Jist gang doon 
an’ tell my gran’father to sen’ the dog 
up. There’s surely some gait o’ garrin’ 
her haud her tongue.” 

Mrs. Catanach threw a terrified glance 
toward Lady Florimel. 

“Indeed I shall do nothing of the 
kind,” replied Florimel. “For shame !” 

“Hoots, my leddy!” returned Mal- 
colm, “I only said it to try the effec’ o’ 
’t. It seems no that ill.” 

“Ye son o’ a deevil’s soo !” cried the 
woman : “Is’ hae amen’s o’ ye for this, 
gien I sud ro’st my ain hert to get it.” 

“’Deed, but ye’re duin that fine 
a’ready ! That foul brute o’ yours has 
gotten his arles [earnest ) tu. I wonner 
what he thinks o’ sawmon-troot noo ? 
Eh, mem ?” 

“Have done, Malcolm,” said Florimel. 
“ I am ashamed of you. If the woman 
is not hurt, we have no business in her 
house.” 

“ Hear till her !” cried Mrs. Catanach 
contemptuously. "The woman /"* 

But Lady Florimel took no heed. She 
had already turned, and was going down 
the stair. Malcolm followed in silence, 
nor did another word from Mrs. Cata- 
nach overtake them. 

Arriveddn the street, Florimel restored 
his pipes to Duncan — who, letting the 
dog go, at once proceeded to fill the bag 
— and instead of continuing her way to 
the harbor turned back, accompanied by 
Malcolm, Demon and “ Lady Stronach’s 
Strathspey.” 

“What a horrible woman that is I” she 
said with a shudder. 


MALCOLM. 


157 


“Ay is she; but I doobt she wad be 
waur gien she didna brak oot that gait 
whiles,” rejoined Malcolm. 

“ How do you mean ?” 

“It frichts fowk at her, an’ maybe 
sometimes pits ’t oot o’ her pooer to du 
waur. Gien ever she seek to mak it up 
wi’ ye, my leddy, I wad hae little to say 
till her gien I was you.” 

“What could I have to say to a low 
creature like that?” 

“Ye wadna ken what she micht be up 
till, or hoo she micht set aboot it, my 
leddy. I wad hae ye mistrust her a’the- 
gither. My daddy has a fine moral nose 
for vermin, an’ he canna bide her, though 
he never had a glimp o’ the fause face o’ 
her, an’ in trowth never spak till her.” 

“ I will tell my father of her. A wo- 
man like that is not fit to live amongst 
civilized people.” 

“Ye’re richt there, my leddy, but she 
wad only gang some ither gait amo’ the 
same. Of coorse ye maun tell yer fath- 
er, but she’s no fit for him to tak ony no- 
tice o’.” 

As they sat at breakfast Florimel did 
tell her father. His first emotion, how- 
ever — at least the first he showed — was 
vexation with herself. “You must not 
be going out alone, and at such ridicu- 
lous hours,” he said. “I shall be com- 
pelled to get you a governess.” 

“Really, papa,” she returned, “I don’t 
see the good of having a marquis for a 
father if I can’t go about as safe as one 
of the fisher-children. And I might just 
as well be at school if I’m not to do as I 
like.” 

“What if the dog had turned on you ?” 
he said. 

“If he dared!” exclaimed the girl, and 
her eyes flashed. 

Her father looked at her for a moment, 
said to himself, “ There spoke a Colon- 
say !” and pursued the subject no further. 

When they passed Mrs. Catanach’s 
cottage an hour after, on their way to 
the harbor, they saw the blinds drawn 
down, as if a dead man lay within : ac- 
cording to after report, she had the brute 
already laid out like a human being, and 
sat by the bedside awaiting a cotnn which 
she had ordered of Watty Witherspail. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

COLONSAY CASTLE. 

The day continued lovely, with a fine 
breeze. The whole sky and air and sea 
were alive — with moving clouds, with 
wind, with waves flashing in the sun. As 
they stepped on board amidst the little 
crowd gathered to see. Lady Florimel 
could hardly keep her delight within the 
bounds of so-called propriety. It was 
all she could do to restrain herself from 
dancing on the little deck half swept by 
the tiller. The boat of a schooner which 
lay at the quay towed them out of the 
harbor. Then the creature spread her 
wings like a bird — mainsail and gaff-top- 
sail, staysail and jib — leaned away to 
leeward, and seemed actually to bound 
over the waves. Malcolm sat at the til- 
ler and Blue P^ter watched the canvas. 

Lady Florimel turned out to be a good 
sailor, and her enjoyment was so con- 
tagious as even to tighten certain strings 
about her father’s heart which had long 
been too slack to vibrate with any simple 
gladness. Her questions were incessant 
— first about the sails and rigging, then 
about the steering ; but when Malcolm 
proceeded to explain how the water re- 
acted on the rudder, she declined to 
trouble herself with that. 

“Let me steer first,” she said, “and 
then tell me how things work.” 

“That is whiles the best plan,” said 
Malcolm. “Jist lay yer han’ upo’ the 
tiller, my leddy, an’ luik oot at yon p’int 
they ca’ the Deid Held yonner. Ye see, 
whan I turn the tiller this gait her heid 
fa’s aff frae the p’int, an’ whan I turn ’t 
this ither gait her heid turns till ’t again : 
hand her heid jist about a twa yards like 
aff o’ ’t.” 

Florimel was more delighted than ever 
when she felt her own hand ruling the 
cutter — so overjoyed indeed that, instead 
of steering straight, she would keep play- 
ing tricks with the rudder, fretting the 
mouth of the sea-palfrey, as it were. 

Every now and then Malcolm had to 
expostulate : “ Noo, my leddy, caw can- 
ny. Dinna steer sae wull. Haud her 
steddy. — My lord, wad ye jist say a word 
to my leddy, or I’ll be forced to tak the' 
tiller fra her ?” 


158 


MALCOLM. 


But by and by she grew weary of the 
attention required, and giving up the 
helm began to seek the explanation of 
its influence in a way that delighted Mal- 
colm. 

“Ye’ll mak a guid skipper some day,” 
he said: “ye speir the richt questons, 
an’ that’s ’maist as guid ’s kennin’ the 
richt answers.” 

At length she threw herself on the 
cushions Malcolm had brought for her, 
and while her father smoked his cigar 
gazed in silence at the shore. Here, 
instead of sands, low rocks, infinitely 
broken and jagged, filled all the tidal 
space — a region of ceaseless rush and 
shattered waters. High cliffs of gray 
and brown rock, orange and green with 
lichens here and there, and in summer 
crowned with golden furze, rose behind 
— untouched by the ordinary tide, but at 
high water lashed by the waves of a 
storm. Beyond the headland which they 
were fast nearing the cliffs and the sea 
met at half-tide. 

The moment they rounded it, “Luik 
there, my lord!” criedMalcolm. “There’s 
Colonsay Castel, ’at yer lordship gets yer 
name. I’m thinkin’ — an’, ony gait, ane o’ 
yer teetles — frae. It maun be mony a 
hunner year sin’ ever a Colonsay baid 
intill’t.” 

Well might he say so, for they looked, 
but saw nothing — only cliff beyond cliff 
rising from a white-fringed shore. Not 
a broken tower, not a ragged battlement 
invaded the horizon. 

“There’s nothing of the sort there,” 
said Lady Florimel. 

“Ye maunna luik for^ooer or pinnacle, 
my leddy, for nane will ye see : their 
time’s lang ower. But jist tak the sea- 
face o’ the scaur [cliff ) i’ yer ee, an’ 
traivel alang ’t oontil ye come till a bit 
’at luiks like mason-wark. It scarce 
rises abune the scaur in ony but ae pairt, 
an’ there it’s but a feow feet o’ a wa’.” 

Following his direction, Lady florimel 
soon found the ruin. The front of a 
projecting portion of the cliff was faced, 
from the very water’s edge as it seemed, 
with mason-work, while on its side the 
masonry rested here and there upon jut- 
ting masses of the rock, serving as cor- 


bels or brackets, the surface of the rock 
itself completing the wall-front. Above, 
grass-grown heaps and mounds, and one 
isolated bit of wall pierced with a little 
window, like an empty eyesocket with 
no skull behind it, were all that was vis- 
ible from the sea of the structure which 
had once risen lordly on the crest of the 
cliff. 

“ It is poor for a ruin, even,” said Lord 
Lossie. 

“But jist consider hoo auld the place 
is, my lord — as auld as the time o’ the 
sea-rovin’ Danes, they say. Maybe it’s 
aulder nor King Alfred. Ye maun re- 
gaird it only as a foondation : there’s 
stanes eneuch lyin’ aboot to shaw ’at 
there maun hae been a gran’ supper- 
structur on ’t ance. I some think it has 
been ance disconneckit frae the Ian’ an’ 
jined on by a drawbrig. Mony a lump 
o’ rock an’ castel thegither has rowed 
doon the brae upon a’ sides, an’ the ruins 
may weel hae filled up the gully at last. 
It’s a wonnerfu’ auld place, my lord.” 

“ What would you do with it if it were 
yours, Malcolm ?” asked Lady Florimel. 

“ I wad spen’ a’ my spare time patch- 
in’ ’t up to gar’t Stan’ oot agane the 
wither. It’s crum’Iet awa’ a heap sin’ I 
min’.” 

“What would be the good of that? A 
rickle of old stones!” said the marquis. 

“ It’s a growth ’at there winna be mony 
mair like,” returned Malcolm. “ I won- 
ner’ at your lordship !” 

He was now steering foj the foot of the 
cliff. As they approached the ruin ex- 
panded and separated, grew more massy, 
and yet more detailed. Still, it was a 
mere root clinging to the soil. 

“ Suppose you were Lord Lossie, Mal- 
colm, what would you do with it?” asked 
Florimel seriously, but with fun in her 
eyes. 

“I wad win at the boddom o’ ’t first.” 

“What do you mean by that ?” 

“Ye’ll see whan ye win intill’t. There’s 
a heap o’ voutit places inside you blin’ 
face. Du ye see yon wee bit squaur 
winnock ? That lats the licht in till ane 
o’ them. There may be vouts aneath 
vouts, for them ’at ye can win intill ’s 
half fu’ o’ yird an’ stanes. I wad hae a’ 


MALCOLM. 


159 


that cleart oot, an’ syne begin frae the 
verra foondation, biggin’ an’ patchin’ an’ 
buttressin’, till I got it a’ as soun’ as a 
whunstane ; an’ whan I cam to the tap 
o’ the rock, there the castel sud tak to 
growin’ again ; an’ grow it sud, till there 
it stude as near what it w^s as the wit an’ 
the han’ o’ man cud set it.” 

“That would ruin a tolerably rich 
man,” said the marquis. 

“ Ony gait, it’s no the w’y fowk ruins 
themsel’s noo-a-days, my lord. They’ll 
pu’ doon an auld hoose ony day to save 
themsel’s blastin’-poother. There’s that 
gran’ place they ca’ Huntly Castel — a 
suckin’ bairn to this for age, but wi 
wa’s, they tell me, wad stan’ for thoo- 
sans o’ years — wad ye believe ’t, there’s 
a sowlless chiel’ o’ a factor there biggin’ 
park -wa’s an’ a grainaiy oot’ o’ it, as gien 
’twar a quarry o’ blue stane ! An’ what’s 
ten times mair exterord’nar, there’s the 
duke o’ Gordon jist lattin’ the gype tak ’s 
wull o’ the hoose o’ His Grace’s ain for- 
bears ! I wad maist as sune lat a man 
speyk ill o’ my daddy.” 

“ But this is past all rebuilding.” said 
his lordship. “ It would be barely pos- 
sible to preserve the remains as they 
are.” 

“ It wad be ill to du, my lord, ohn set 
it up again. But jist think what a gran’ 
place it wad be to bide in !” 

The marquis burst out laughing. “A 
grand place for gulls and kittiwakes and 
sea-crows,” he said. “But where is it, 
pray, that a fisherman like you gets such 
extravagant notions ? How do you come 
to think of such things ?” 

“Thoucht’s free, my lord. Gien a 
thing be guid to think, what for sudna 
a fisher-lad think it ? I hae read a heap 
aboot auld castles an’ sic-like i’ the his- 
tory o’ Scotian’, an’ there’s mony an 
auld tale an’ ballant aboot. them. — Jist 
luik there, my leddy ! Ye see yon awfu’ 
hole i’ the wa’, wi’ the verra inside o’ 
the hill, like, rushin’ oot at it? — I cud 
tell ye a fearfu’ tale aboot that same.” 

“Do let ns have it,” said Florimel 
eagerly, setting herself to listen. 

“Better" wait till we land,” said the 
marquis lazily. 

“Ay, my lord: we’re ower near the 


shore to begin a story. — Slack the main- 
sheet, Peter, an’ stan’ by the jib-doon- 
haul. — Dinna rise, my leddy; she’ll be 
o’ the grun’ in anither meenute.” 

Almost immediately followed a slight 
grating noise, which grew loud, and be- 
fore one could say her speed had slack- 
ened the cutter rested on the pebbles, 
with the small waves of the just-turned 
tide flowing against her quarter. Mal- 
colm was overboard in a moment. 

“ How the deuce are we to land here ?” 
said the marquis. 

“Yes,” followed Florimel, half risen 
on her elbow, “how the deuce are we to 
land here ?” 

“Hoot, my leddy!” said Malcolm, 
“ sic words ill become yer bonny mou’.” 

The marquis laughed. 

“ I ask you how we are to get ashore ?” 
said Florimel with grave dignity, though 
an imp was laughing in the shadows of 
her eyes. 

“ I’ll sune lat ye see that, my leddy,” 
answered Malcolm ; and leaning over 
the low bulwark he had her in his arms 
almost before she could utter an objec- 
tion. Carrying her ashore like a child 
— indeed, to steady herself she had put 
an arm round his shoulders — he set her 
down on the shingle, and, turning in the 
act, left her as if she had been a burden 
of nets and waded back to the boat. 

“And how, pray, am I to go ?” asked 
the marquis. “Do you fancy you can 
carry me in that style ?” 

“ Ow na, my lord ! that wadna be dig- 
nifeed for a man. Jist loup upo’ my 
back.” As he spoke he turneji his broad 
shoulders, stooping. 

The marquis accepted the invitation 
and rode ashore like a schoolboy, laugh- 
ing merrily. 

They were in a little valley open only 
to tire sea, one boundary of which was 
the small promontory whereon the castle 
stood. The side of it next them, of stone 
and live rock combined, rose perpendic- 
ular from the beach to a great height, 
whence to gain the summit they had to 
go a little way back and ascend by a 
winding path till they reached the ap- 
proach to the castle from the landward 
side. 


i6o 


MALCOLM. 


“ Noo, wadna this be a gran’ place to 
bide at, my lord?” said Malcolm as they 
reached the summit — the marquis breath- 
less, Florimel fresh as a lark. ‘‘ Jist see 
sic an ootluik ! The verra place for pi- 
rates like the auld Danes ! Naething 
cud escape the sicht o’ them here. Yon’s 
the hills o’ Sutherlan’. Ye see yon ane 
like a cairn ? — that’s a great freen’ to the 
fisher-fowk to tell them whaur they are. 
Yon’s the laich co’st o’ Caithness. An’ 
yonner’s the North Pole, only ye canna 
see sae far. Jist think, my lord, hoo 
gran’ wad be the blusterin’ blap o’ the 
win’ aboot the turrets as ye stude at yer 
window on a winter’s day luikin oot ower 
the gurly twist o’ the watters, the air fu’ 
o’ flichterin snaw, the cloods a mile thick 
abune yer heid, an’ no a leevin cratur but 
yer ain fowk nearer nor the fairm-toon 
ower the broo yonner!” 

” I don’t see anything very attractive 
in your description,” said his lordship. 
‘‘And where,” he added, looking around 
him, ‘‘would be the garden ?” 

‘‘What cud ye want wi’ a gairden, an’ 
the sea oot afore ye there ? The sea’s 
bonnier than ony gairden. A gairden’s 
maist aye the same, or it changes sae 
slow, wi’ the ae flooer gaein’ in an’ the 
ither flooer cornin’ oot, ’at ye maist dinna 
nottice the odds. But the sea’s never 
twa days the same. Even lauchin’, she 
never lauchs twise wi’ the same face, an’ 
whan she sulks she has a hunner w’ys o’ 
sulkin’.” 

‘‘And how would you get a carriage 
up here ?” said the marquis. 

‘‘Fine tl^at, my lord. There’s a ro’d 
up as far’s yon neuk. An’ for this broo, 
I wad clear awa the lowse stanes an’ lat 
the nait’ral gerse grow sweet an’ fine, an’ 
turn a lot o’ bonny heelan’ sheep on till’t. 
I wad keep yon ae bit o’ whuns, for 
though they’re rouch i’ the leaf they 
blaw sae gowden. Syne I wad gether 
a’ the bits o’ drains frae a’ sides till I had 
a bonny stream o’ watter aff o’ the sweet 
corn-lan’ rowin’ doon here whaur we 
Stan’, an’ ower to the castel itsel’, an’ 
throu’ coort an’ kitchie, gurglin’ an’ rin- 
nin’, an’ syne oot again an’ doon the 
face o’ the scaur, splashin’ an’ loupin’ 
like mad. I wad lea’ a’ the lave to Na- 


tur’ hersel’. It wad be a gran’ place, 
my lord ! An’ whan ye was tired o’ ’t 
ye cud jist rin awa’ to Lossie Hoose an’ 
hide ye i’ the how there for a cheenge. 
I wad like fine to hae the sortin’ o’ ’t for 
yer lordship.” 

‘‘ I dare say,” said the marquis. 

‘‘ Let’s find a nice place for our lunch- 
eon, papa, and then we can sit down and 
hear Malcolm’s story,” said Florimel. 

‘‘ Dinna ye think, my lord, it wad be 
better to get the baskets up first?” in- 
terposed Malcolm. 

‘‘Yes, I think so. Wilson can help 
you.” 

‘‘Na, my lord: he canna lea’ the cut- 
ter. The tide’s risin’, an’ she’s ower near 
the rocks.” 

‘‘ Well, well ! we sha’n’t want lunch 
for an hour yet, so you can take your 
time.” 

‘‘ But ye maun tak tent, my lord, hoo 
ye gang amo’ the ruins. There’s awk- 
ward kin’ o’ holes aboot thae vouts, an’ 
jist whaur ye think there’s nane. I din- 
na a’thegither like yer gaein’ wantin’ 
me.” 

‘‘ Nonsense ! Go along,” said the mar- 
quis. 

‘‘But I’m no jokin’,” persisted Mal- 
colm. 

‘‘Yes, yes, we’ll be careful,” returned 
his master impatiently, and Malcolm ran 
down the hill,'but not altogether satisfied 
with the assurance. 


CHAPTER XL. 

THE DEIL’S WINNOCK, 

Florimel was disappointed, for she 
longed to hear Malcolm’s tale. But 
amid such surroundings it was not so 
very difficult to wait. They set out to 
have a peep at the ruins and choose a 
place for luncheon. 

From the point where they stood, look- 
ing seaward, the ground sunk to the nar- 
row isthmus supposed by Malcolm to fill 
a cleft formerly crossed by a drawbridge, 
and beyond it rose again to the grassy 
mounds in which lay so many of the old 
bones of the ruined carcass. 

Passing along the isthmus, where on 


MALCOLM. 


i6i 


one side was a steep descent to the shore 
of the little bay, and on the other the live 
rock hewn away to a wall shining and 
sparkling with crystals of a clear irony 
brown, they next clambered up a rude 
ascent of solid rock, and so reached 
what had been the centre of the sea- 
ward portion of the castle. Here they 
came suddenly upon a small hole at 
their feet, going right down. Florimel 
knelt, and peeping in saw the remains 
of a small spiral stair. The opening 
seemed large enough to let her through, 
and, gathering her garments tight about 
her, she was halfway buried in the earth 
before her father, whose attention had 
been drawn elsewhere, saw what she was 
about. He thought she had fallen in, but 
her merry laugh reassured him, and ere 
he could reach her she had screwed her- 
self out of sight. He followed her in 
some anxiety, but after a short descent 
rejoined her in a small vaulted cham- 
ber, where she stood looking from the 
little square window Malcolm had point- 
ed out to them as they neared the shore. 
The bare walls around them were of 
brown stone, wet with the drip of rains, 
and full of holes where the mortar had 
yielded and stones had fallen out. In- 
deed, the mortar had all but vanished : 
the walls stood and the vaults hung 
chiefly by their own weight. By breaches 
in the walls, where once might have been 
doors, Florimel passed from one cham- 
ber to another and another, each dark, 
brown, vaulted, damp and weather-eaten, 
while her father stood at the little window 
she had left, listlessly watching the two 
men on the beach far below landing the 
lunch, and the rippled sea, and the cutter 
rising and falling with every wave of the 
flowing tide. 

At length Florimel found herself on 
the upper end of a steep-sloping ridge of 
hard, smooth earth lying along the side 
of one chamber, and leading across to 
yet another beyond, which, unlike the 
rest, was full of light. The passion of 
exploration being by this time thoroughly 
roused in her, she descended the slope, 
half sliding, half creeping. When she 
thus reached the hole into the bright 
chamber, she almost sickened with hor- 

II 


ror, for the slope went off steeper, till it 
rushed, as it were, out of a huge gap in 
the wall of the castle, laying bare the 
void of space and the gleam of the sea 
at a frightful depth below : if she had 
gone one foot farther she could not have 
saved herself from sliding out of the gap. 
It was the very breach Malcolm had 
pointed out to them from below, and 
concerning which he had promised them 
the terrible tale. She gave a shriek of 
terror and laid hold of the broken wall. 
To heighten her dismay to the limit of 
mortal endurance, she found at the very 
first effort — partly, no doubt, from the 
paralysis of fear — that it was impossible 
to reascend; and there she lay on the 
verge of the steep slope, her head and 
shoulders in the inner of the two cham- 
bers, and the rest of her body in the 
outer, with the hideous vacancy staring 
at her. In a few moments it had fas- 
cinated her so that she dared not' close 
her eyes lest it should leap upon her. 
The wonder was that she did not lose 
her consciousness, and fall at once to the 
bottom of the cliff. '' 

Her cry brought her father in terror to 
the top of the slope. 

“Are you hurt, child?” he cried, not 
seeing the danger she was in. 

“It’s so steep I can’t get up again,” 
she said faintly. 

“I’ll soon get you up,” he returned 
cheerily, and began to descend. 

“Oh, papa!” she cried, “don’t come 
a step nearer. If you should slip, we 
should go to the bottom of the rock to- 
gether. Indeed, indeed, there is great 
danger. Do run for Malcolm.” 

Thoroughly alarmed, yet mastering 
the signs of his fear, he enjoined her to- 
keep perfectly still while he was gone, 
and hurried to the little window. Thence- 
he shouted to the men below, but in vain, 
for the wind prevented his voice from 
reaching them. He rushed from the 
vaults, and began to descend at the first 
practical spot he could find, shouting as 
he went. 

The sound of his voice cheered Flori- 
mel a little as she lay forsaken in her 
misery. Her whole effort now was to 
keep herself from fainting, and for this 


i 62 


MALCOLM. 


end to abstract her mind from the terrors 
of her situation : in this she was aided 
by a new shock, which, had her position 
been a less critical one, would itself have 
caused her a deadly dismay. A curious 
little sound came to her, apparently from 
somewhere in the quite dusky chamber 
in which her head lay. She fancied it 
made by some little animal, and thought 
of the wild-cats and otters of which Mal- 
colm had spoken as haunting the caves ; 
but while the new fear mitigated the for- 
mer, the greater fear subdued the less. 
It came a little louder, then again a little 
louder, growing like a hurried whisper, 
but without seeming to approach her. 
Louder still it grew, and yet was but an 
inarticulate whispering. Then it began 
to divide into some resemblance of ar- 
ticulate sounds. Presently, to her utter 
astonishment, she heard herself called 
by name. 

“ Lady Florimel ! Lady Florimel !” said 
the sound plainly enough. 

“Who’s there ?’’ she faltered, with her 
heart in her throat, hardly knowing 
whether she spoke or not. 

“ There’s nobody here,’’ answered the 
voice. “I’m in my own bedroom at 
home, where your dog killed mine.’’ 

It was the voice of Mrs. Catanach, but 
both words and tone were almost Eng- 
lish. 

Anger and the sense of a human pres- 
ence, although an evil one, restored Lady 
Florimel’s speech. “ How dare you talk 
such nonsense ?’’ she said. 

“ Don’t anger me again,’’ returned the 
voice. “ I tell you the truth. I’m sorry 
1 spoke to your ladyship as I did this 
■morning. It was the sight of my poor 
•dog that drove me mad.’’ 

“/ couldn’t help it. I tried to keep 
mine off him, as you know.’’ 

“I do know it, my lady, and that’s 
why I beg your pardon.’’ 

“Then there’s nothing more to be 
■said.’’ 

“Yes, there is, my lady: I want to 
imake you some amends. I know more 
than most people, and I know a secret 
’ that some would give their ears for. Will 
•you trust me ?’’ 

“ I will hear what you’ve got to say.’’ 


“Well, I don’t care whether you be- 
lieve me or not : I shall tell you nothing 
but the truth. What do you think of 
Malcolm MacPhail, my lady ?’’ 

“What do you mean by asking me 
such a question ?’’ 

“Only to tell you that by birth he is a 
gentleman, and comes of an old family.’’ 

“ But why do you tell me ?" said Lady 
Florimel. “What have / to do with 
it ?’’ 

“Nothing, my lady — or himself either. 
I hold the handle of the business. But 
you needn’t think it’s from any favor 
for him. I don’t care what comes of 
him. There’s no love lost between him 
and me. You heard yourself, this very 
day, how he abused both me and my 
poor dog who is now lying dead on the 
bed beside me.’’ 

“You don’t expect me to believe such 
nonsense as that ?’’ said Lady Florimel. 

There was no reply. The voice had 
departed, and the terrors of her position 
returned with gathered force in the des- 
olation of redoubled silence that closes 
around an unanswered question. A 
trembling seized her, and she could 
hardly persuade herself that she was 
not slipping by slow inches down the in- 
cline. 

Minutes that seemed hours passed. 
At length she heard feet and voices, and 
presently her father called her name, but 
she was too agitated to reply except with 
a moan. A voice she was yet more glad 
to hear followed — the voice of Malcolm, 
ringing confident and clear. 

“Haud awa’, my lord,’’ it said, “an’ 
lat me come at her.’’ 

“You’re not going down so ?’’ said the 
marquis angrily. “You’ll slip to a cer- 
tainty, and send her to the bottom.’’ 

“My lord,’’ returned Malcolm, “I ken 
what I’m aboot, an’ ye dinna. I beg ’at 
ye’ll haud ootby, an’ no upset the lassie, 
for something maun depen’ upon hersel’. 
Jist gang awa’ back into that ither vout, 
my lord. I insist upo’ ’t.’’ 

His lordship obeyed, and Malcolm, 
who had been pulling off his boots as 
he spoke, now addressed Main “Here, 
Peter,’’ he said, “haud on to the tail o’ 
that rope like grim deith. Na, I dinna 


MALCOLM, 


want it roon’ me : it’s to gang roon’ her. 
But dinna ye haul, for it micht hurt her, 
an’ she’ll lippen to me and come up o’ 
hersel’. Dinna be feart, my bonny led- 
dy : there’s nae danger — no ae grain. 
I’m cornin’.” 

With the rope in his hand he walked 
down the incline, and kneeling by Flori- 
mel, close to the broken wall, proceeded 
to pass the rope under and round her 
waist, talking to her, as he did so, in the 
tone of one encouraging a child. 

"Noo, my leddy ! noo, my bonny led- 
dy ! Ae meenute, an’ ye’re as safe’s gien 
ye lay i’ yer minnie’s lap.” 

” I daren’t get up, Malcolm : I daren’t 
turn my back to it. I shall drop right 
down into it if I do,” she faltered, be- 
ginning to sob. 

“ Nae fear o’ that. There ! ye canna 
fa’ noo, for Blue Peter has the ither en’, 
an’ Peter ’s as strong ’s twa pownies. 
I’m gaein’ to tak aff yer shune neist.” 

So saying, he lowered himself a little 
through the breach, holding on by the 
broken wall with one hand, while he 
gently removed her sandal shoes with 
the other. Drawing himself up again, 
he rose to his feet, and taking her hand, 
said, ” Noo, my leddy, tak a guid grip o’ 
my han’, an’ as I lift ye, gie a scram’le 
wi’ yer twa bit feet, an’ as sune’s ye fin’ 
them aneth ye, jist gang up as gien ye 
war clim’in’ a gey stey brae \rather steep 
ascent). Ye cudna fa’ gien ye tried yer 
warst.” 

At the grasp of his strong arm the girl 
felt a great gush of confidence rise in 
her heart: she did exactly as he told 
her, scrambled to her feet, and walked 
up the slippery way without one slide, 
holding fast by Malcolm’s hand, while 
Joseph kept just feeling her waist with 
the loop of the rope as he drew it in. 
When she reached the top she fell, al- 
most fainting, into her father’s arms, but 
was recalled to herself by an exclama- 
tion from Blue Peter: just as Malcolm 
relinquished her hand his foot slipped. 
But he slid down the side of the mound 
only — some six or seven feet to the bot- 
tom of the chamber, whence his voice 
came cheerily, saying he would be with 
them in a moment. When, however. 


163 

ascending by another way, he rejoined 
them, they were shocked to see blood 
pouring from his foot : he had lighted 
amongst broken glass, and had felt a 
sting, but only now was aware that the 
cut was a serious one. He made little 
of it, however, bound it up, and, as the 
marquis would not now hear of bringing 
the luncheon to the top, having, he said, 
had more than enough of the place, 
limped painfully after them down to the 
shore. 

Knowing whither they were bound, ' 
and even better acquainted with the 
place than Malcolm himself, Mrs. Cata- 
nach, the moment she had drawn down 
her blinds in mourning for her dog, had 
put her breakfast in her pocket and set 
out from her back door, contriving mis- 
chief on her way. Arrived at the castle, 
she waited a long time before they made 
their appearance, but was rewarded for 
her patience, as she said to herself, by 
the luck which had so wonderfully sec- 
onded her cunning. From a broken 
loophole in the foundation of a round 
tower she now watched them go down 
the hill. The moment they were out of 
sight she crept like a fox from his earth, 
and having actually crawled beyond 
danger of discovery, hurried away in- 
land, to reach Portlossie by footpaths 
and byways, and there show herself on 
her own doorstep. 

The woman’s consuming ambition 
was to possess power o%>er others — pow- 
er to hurt them if she chose — power to 
pull hidden strings fastened to their 
hearts or consciences or history or foi- 
bles or crimes, and so reduce them, in 
her knowledge, if not in theirs, to the 
condition of being more or less her 
slaves. Hence she pounced upon a se- 
cret as one would on a diamond in the 
dust : any fact even was precious, for it 
might be allied to some secret — might, 
in combination with other facts, become 
potent. How far this vice may have 
had its origin in the fact that she had 
secrets of her own, might be an interest- 
ing question. 

As to the mysterious communication 
she had made to her. Lady Florimel was 
not able to turn her mind to it, nor in- 


164 


MALCOLM. 


deed for some time was she able to think 
of anything. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

THE CLOUDED SAPPHIRES. 

Before they reached the bottom of 
the hill, however, Florimel had recover- 
ed her spirits a little, and had even at- 
tempted a laugh at the ridiculousness of 
her late situation, but she continued very 
pale. They sat down beside the baskets 
on some great stones fallen from the 
building above. Because of his foot, 
they would not allow Malcolm to serve 
them, but told Mair and him to have' 
their dinner near, and called the former 
when they wanted anything. 

Lady Florimel revived still more after 
she had had a morsel of partfidge and a 
glass of wine, but every now and then 
she shuddered : evidently she was haunt- 
ed by the terror of her late position, and, 
with the gladness of a discoverer, the 
marquis bethought himself of Malcolm’s 
promised tale as a means of turning her 
thoughts aside from it. As soon, there- 
fore, as they had finished their meal, he 
called Malcolm and told him they want- 
ed his story. 

“It’s some fearsome,’’ said Malcolm, 
looking anxiously at the pale face of 
Lady Florimel. 

“ Nonsense !’’ returned the marquis, for 
he thought, and perhaps rightly, that if 
such it would only serve his purpose the 
better. 

“I wad raither tell ’t i’ the gloamin’ 
roon’ a winter fire,’’ said Malcolm, with 
another anxious look at Lady Florimel. 

“Do go on,’’ she said: “I want so 
much to hear it !’’ 

“Go on,’’ said the marquis; and Mal- 
colm, seating himself near them, began. 

I need not again tell my reader that 
he may take a short cut if he pleases. 

“There was ance a great nobleman — 
like yersel’, my lord, only no sae douce 
— an’ he had a great followin’, and was 
thoucht muckle o’ in a’ the country frae 
John o’ Grot’s to the Mull o’ GalloWa’. 
But he was terrible prood, an’ thoucht 


naebody was to compare wi’ him, nor 
onything ’at onybody had to compare 
wi’ onything ’at he had. His horse war 
aye swifter an’ his kye aye better milkers 
nor ither fowk’s ; there war nae deer sae 
big nor had sic muckle horns as the reid 
deer on his heelan’ hills ; nae gillies sae 
Strang’s his gillies ; and nae castles sae 
weel biggit or sae auld as his. It may 
ha’ been a’ verra true for onything I ken, 
or onything the story says to the con- 
trar’ ; but it wasna heumble or Christi- 
an-like o’ him to be aye at it, ower an’ 
ower, aye gloryin’, as gien he had a’thing 
sae by-ord’nar’ ’cause he was by-ord’nar’ 
himsel’, an’ they a’ cam till him by the 
verra natur’ o’ things. There was but 
ae thing in which he was na fawvored, 
and that was that he had nae son to tak 
up what he left. But it maittered the 
less that the teetle as weel’s the Ian’s 
wad, as the tale tells, gang a’ the same 
till a lass-bairn — an’ a lass-bairn he had.’’ 

“ That is the case in the Lossie family,’’ 
said the marquis. 

“That’s hoo I hae hard the tale, my 
lord, but I wad be sorry sud a’ it con- 
teens meet wi’ like corroboration. As I 
say, a dochter there was, an’ gien a’ was 
surpassin’ she was surpassin’ a’. The 
faimily piper, or sennachy, as they ca’d 
him — I wadna wonner, my lord, gien 
thae gran’ pipes yer boonty gae my 
gran’father had been his — he said in ane 
o’ his sangs ’at -the sun blinkit whan- 
ever she shawed hersel’ at the hoose- 
door. I s’ warran’ ae thing — ’at a’ the 
lads blinkit whan she luikit at them, gien 
sae be she cud ever be said to conde- 
scen’ sae far as to luik at ony ; for gien 
ever she set ee upo’ ane, she never loot 
it rist : her ee aye jist slippit ower a face 
as gien the face micht or micht not be 
there — she didna ken or care. A’body 
said she had sic a hauchty leuk as was 
never seen on human face afore ; an’ for 
freen’ly luik, she had nane for leevin’ 
cratur, ’cep’ it was her ain father or her 
ain horse ’at slie rade upo’. Her mither 
was deid. 

“Her father wad fain hae seen her 
merriet afore he dee’d, but the pride he 
had gien her was like to be the en’ o’ a’, 
for she coontit it naething less than a 


MALCOLM. 


disgrace to pairt wi’ maiden leeberty. 
‘ There’s no man,’ she wad say whan her 
father wad be pressin’ upo’ the subjec’ 
— ‘there’s no mortal man but yersel’ 
worth the turn o’ my ee.’ An’ the father, 
puir man ! was ower weel pleased wi’ 
the flattery to be sae angry wi’ her as he 
wad fain hae luikit. Sae time gaed on 
till frae a bonny lassie she had grown a 
gran’ leddy, an’ cud win up the hill nae 
forder, but bude to gang doon o’ the ither 
side ; an’ her father was jist near-han’ 
daft wi’ anxiety to see her wad. But no, 
never ane wad she hearken till. 

“At last there cam to the hoose — that’s 
Colonsay Castel up there — ae day, a 
yoong man frae Norrowa’, the son o’ a 
great nobleman o’ that country ; an’ wi’ 
him she was some ta’en. He was a fine 
man to leuk at, an’ he pat them a’ to 
shame at onything that nott stren’th or 
skeel. But he was as heumble as he 
was fit, an’ never teuk ony credit till 
himsel’ for onything ’at he did or was ; 
an’ this she was ill-pleased wi’, though 
she cudna help likin’ him, an’ made nae 
banes o’ lattin’ him see ’at he wasna a’- 
thegither a scunner till her. 

“Weel, ae mornin’ verra ear’ she gaed 
oot intill her gairden an’ luikit ower the 
hedge ; an’ what sud she see but this 
same yoong nobleman tak the bairn frae 
a puir traivelin’ body, help her ower a 
dyke, and gie her her bairn again ? He 
was at her ain side in anither meen- 
ute, but he was jist that meenute ahint 
his tryst, an’ she was in a cauld rage at 
him. He tried to turn her hert, sayin’ 
wad she hae had him no help the puir 
thing ower the dyke, her bairnie bein’ 
but a fortnicht auld an’ hersel’ unco 
weak-like ? but my lady made a mou’ 
as gien she was scunnert to hear sic 
things made mention o’. An’ was she 
to Stan’ luikin’ ower the hedge an’ him 
convoyin’ a beggar-wife an’ her brat? 
An’ syne to come to her ohn ever wash- 
en his ban’s ! ‘ Hoot, my leddy !’ says 

he, ‘ the puir thing was a human cratur.’ 
‘ Gien she had been a God’s angel,’ says 
she, ‘ ye had no richt to keep me waitin’.’ 
* Gien she had been an angel,’ says he, 
‘ there wad hae been little occasion, but 
the wuman stude in wand o’ help.’ ‘ Gien 


165 

’t had been to save her life, ye sudna hae 
keepit me waitin’,’ says she. The lad 
was scaret at that, as weel he micht, an’ 
takin’ aff ’s bannet he lowtit laich an’ 
left her. But this didna shuit my leddy : 
she wasna to be left afore she said Gang. 
Sae she cried him back, an’ he cam, 
bannet in han’ ; an’ she leuch, an’ made 
as gien she had been but tryin’ the smed- 
dum o’ ’m, an’ thoucht him a true k-nicht. 
The puir fallow pluckit up at this, an’ 
doon he fell upo ’s k-nees, an’ oot wi’ a’ 
was in ’s hert — hoo ’at he lo’ed her mair 
nor tongue cud tell, an’ gien she wad 
hae him he wad be her slave for ever. 

‘“Ye s’ be that,’’ says she, an’ leuch 
him to scorn. ‘ Gang efter yer beggar- 
wife,’ she says : ‘ I’m sick o’ ye.’ 

“ He rase, an’ teuk up ’s bannet, an’ , 
loupit the hedge, an’ gae a blast upo’ ’s 
horn, an’ gethered his men, an’ steppit 
aboord his boat, owar by Pufifie Heid 
yonner, an’ awa’ to Norrowa’ ower the 
faem, an’ was never hard tell o’ in Scot- 
ian’ again. An’ the leddy was haucht- 
ier and cairried her heid heicher nor 
ever — maybe to hide a scaum {slight 
mark of burning') she had taen, for a’ 
her pride. 

“Sae things gaed on as afore till at 
len’th the tide o’ her time was weel past 
the turn, an’ a streak o’ the snaw in her 
coal-black hair. For, as the auld sang 
says. Her hair was like the craw. An* 
her ble was like the snaw. An’ her bow- 
bendit lip Was like the rose-hip. An’ her 
ee was like the licht’nin’. Glorious an’ 
fricht’nin’. But a’ that wad sune be ower. 

“Aboot this time, ae day i’ the gleam- 
in’, there cam on sic’ an awfu’ storm ’at 
the fowk o’ the castel war frichtit ’maist 
oot o’ their wits. The licht’nin’ cam oot 
o’ the yerd, an’ no frae the lift at a’ ; the 
win’ roared as gien ’t had been an in- 
carnat rage ; the thunner rattlet an’ 
crackit as gien the mune an’ a’ the stars 
had been made kettledrums o’ for the 
occasion ; but never a drap o’ rain or a 
stane o’ hail fell : naething brak oot but 
blue licht an’ roarin’ win’. But the 
strangest thing was, that the sea lay a’ 
the time as oonconcerned as a sleepin’ 
bairn ; the win’ got nae mair grip o’ ’t 
nor gien a* the angels had been poorin’ 


i66 


MALCOLM. 


ile oot o’ widows’ cruses upo’ ’t; the 
verra tide came up quaieter nor ord’nar; 
and the fowk war sair perplext, as weel 
’s frichtit. 

“ Jist as the clock o’ the castel chappit 
the deid o’ the nicht the clamor o’ v’ices 
was hard throu’ the thunner an’ the win’, 
an’ the warder, luikin’ doon frae the 
heich bartizan o’ the muckle tooer, saw, 
i’ the fire-flauchts, a company o’ riders 
appro’chin’ the castel — a’ upo’ gran’ 
horses, he said, that sprang this gait an’ 
that, an’ shot fire frae their een. At the 
drawbrig they blew a horn ’at rowtit like 
a’ the bulls o’ Bashan, an’, whan the 
warder challencht them, claimt hoose- 
room for the nicht. Naebody had ever 
hard o’ the place they cam frae — it was 
sae far awa ’at as sune ’s a body hard 
the name o’ ’t he forgot it again — but 
their beasts war as fresh an’ as fu’ o’ 
smeddum as I tell ye, an’ no a hair o’ 
ane o’ them turnt. There was jist a 
de’il’s dizzen o’ them, an’ whaurever ye 
began to coont them the thirteent had 
aye a reid baird. 

“Whan the news was taen to the mar- 
kis — the yerl, I sud say — he gae orders 
to lat them in at ance ; for whatever 
fau’ts he had, naither fear nor hainin’ 
[penuriousness) was amang them. Sae 
in they cam, clatterin’ ower the draw- 
brig, ’at gaed up an’ down aneth them 
as gien it wad hae cast them. 

“ Richt fremt [strange) fowk they luikit 
whan they cam intill the coortyaird — a’ 
spanglet wi’ bonny bricht stanes o’ a’ 
colors. They war like nae fowk ’at ever 
the yerl had seen, an’ he had been to 
Jeroozlem in ’s day, an’ had fouchten wi’ 
the Saracenes. But they war coorteous 
men an’ weel-bred — an’ maistly weel- 
faured tu — ilk ane luikin’ a lord’s son at 
the least. They had na a single servin’- 
man wi’ them, an’ wad alloo nane o’ the 
fowk aboot the place to lay han’ upo’ 
their beasts ; an’ ilk ane as he said na 
wad gie the stallion aneth him a daig 
, wi’ ’s spurs, or a kick i’ the ribs gien he 
was aff o’ ’s back wi’ the steel tae o’ his 
bute ; an’ the brute wad lay his lugs i’ 
the how o’ ’s neck an’ turn his heid 
asklent, wi’ ae white ee gleyin’ oot o’ ’t, 
an’ lift a hin’ leg wi’ the glintin’ shoe 


turnt back, an’ luik like Sawtan himsel* 
whan he daurna. 

“Weel, my lord an’ my leddy war sit- 
tin’ i’ the muckle ha’ — for they cudna 
gang to their beds in sic a by-ous storm 
— whan him ’at was the chief o’ them 
was ushered in by the seneschal — that’s 
the steward, like — booin’ afore him, an’ 
ca’in’ him the prence, an’ nae mair, for 
he cudna min’ the name o’ ’s place lang 
eneuch to say ’t ower again. 

“An’ sae a prence he was; an’, for- 
bye that, jist a man by himsel’ to luik at 
— i’ the prime o’ life maybe, but no free- 
ly i’ the first o’ ’t, for he had the luik as 
gien he had had a hard time o’ ’t, an’ 
had a white streak an’ a craw’s fit here 
and there — the liklier to please my leddy, 
wha luikit doon upo’ a’body yoonger nor 
hersel’. He had a commandin’, maybe 
some owerbeirin’, luik — ane ’at a man 
micht hae birstled up at, but a leddy like 
my leddy wad welcome as worth bring- 
in’ doon. He was dressed as never man 
had appeart in Scotian’ afore, glorious 
withoot — no like the leddy i’ the Psalms, 
for yer ee cud licht nowhaur but there 
was the glitter o’ a stane, sae ’at he flash- 
ed a’ ower ilka motion he made. He 
cairriet a short swoord at his side, no 
muckle langer nor my daddy’s dirk, as 
gien he never foucht but at doss quar- 
ters; the whilk had three sapphires — • 
blue stanes, they tell me, an’ muckle 
anes — lowin’ i’ Ae sheath o’ ’t, an’ a 
muckier ane still i’ the heft ; only they 
war some drumly [clouded), the leddy 
thoucht, bein’ a jeedge o’ hingars-at-lugs 
[earrings) an’ sic vainities. 

“ That may be ’s it may ; but in cam 
the prence, wi’ a laich boo' an’ a gran’ 
upstrauchtin’ again ; an’ though, as I say, 
he was flashin’ a’ ower, his mainner was 
quaiet as the munelicht — jist grace itsel’. 
He profest himsel unco’ indebtit for the 
shelter accordit him; an his een aye 
soucht the leddy’s, an’ his admiration o’ 
her was plain in ilka luik an’ gestur’, an’ 
though his words were feow they a’ meant 
mair nor they said. Afore his supper 
cam in her hert was at his wull. 

“ They say that whan a wuman’s late 
o’ fa’in in love — ye’ll ken, my lord: I 
ken naething aboot it — it’s the mair likly 


MALCOLM. 


167 


to be an oonrizzonin’ an’ oon controlla- 
ble fancy : in sic maitters it seems wis- 
dom comesna wi’ gray hairs. Within 
ae hoor the leddy was enamored o’ the 
strainger in a fearfu’ w’y. She poored 
oot his wine till him wi’ her ain han’, an’ 
the moment he put the glaiss till ’s lips 
the win’ fell an’ the lichtnin’ devallt 
{ceased). She set hersel’ to put ques- 
tons till him, sic as she thoucht he wad 
like to answer — a’ aboot himsel’ an’ what 
he had come throu’. An’ sic stories as 
he tellt ! She atten’t till him as she had 
never dune to guest afore, an’ her father 
saw ’at she was sair taen wi’ the man. 
But he wasna a’thegither sae weel pleased, 
for there was something aboot him — he 
cudna say what — ’at garred him grue 
{shudder). He wasna a man to hae 
fancies or stan’ upo’ freits, but he cudna 
help the creep that gaed doon his back- 
bane ilka time his ee encoontert that o’ 
the prence : it was aye sic a strange luik 
the prence cuist upon him — a luik as 
gien him an’ the yerl had been a’ready 
ower weel acquaint, though the yerl cud- 
na min’ ’at ever he had set ee upo’ him. 
A’ the time, hooever, he had a kin’ o’ a 
suspicion ’at they bude to be auld ac- 
quaintances, an’ sair he soucht to mak 
him oot, but the prence wad never lat a 
body get a glimp o’ his een ’cep’ the 
body he was speykin’ till; that is, gien 
he cud help it, for the yerl did get twa 
or three glimps o’ them as he spak till ’s 
dauchter ; an’ he declaret efterhin to the 
king’s commissioner that a pale blue kin’ 
o’ licht cam frae them, the whilk the 
body he was conversin’ wi’, an’ luikin’ 
straucht at, never saw. 

“\Veel, the short and the lang o’ ’t 
that nicht was that they gaed a’ to their 
beds. 

“I’ the mornin’, whan the markis — 
the yerl, I sud say — an’ his dochter cam 
doon the stair, the haill menyie {com- 
pany) was awa. Never a horse or horse 
was i’ the stable but the yerl’s ain beasts 
— no ae hair left ahin’ to shaw that they 
had been there ; an’ i’ the chaumers al- 
lotted to their riders never a pair o’ sheets 
had been sleepit in. 

“The yerl an’ my leddy sat doon to 
brak their fast— no freely i’ the same hu- 


mor, the twa o’ them, as ye may weel 
believe. Whan they war aboot half 
throu’, wha sud come stridin’ in, some 
dour an’ ill-pleased like, but the prence 
himsel’ ! Baith yerl an’ leddy startit up : 
’at they sud hae sitten doon till a meal 
ohn even adverteest the veesitor that sic 
was their purpose ! They made muckle 
adu wi’ apologies an’ explanations, but 
the prence aye booed an’ booed, an’ said 
sae little that they thocht him mortal an- 
gert ; the whilk was a great vex to my 
leddy, ye may be sure. He had a with- 
ert-like luik. an’ the verra diamonds in 
’s claes war douf like. A’thegither he 
had a brunt-oot kin’ o’ aissy {ashy) leuk. 

“At len’th the butler cam in, an’ the 
prence signed till him, an’ he gaed near, 
an’ the prence drew him doon an’ toot- 
mootit in ’s lug ; an’ his breath, the auld 
man said, was like the grave : he hadna 
had ’s mornin’, he said, an’ tellt him to 
put the whusky upo’ the table. The 
butler did as he was tauld, an’ set doon 
the decanter, an’ a glaiss aside it ; but 
the prence bannt him jist fearfu’, an’ 
ordert him to tak awa that playock and 
fess a tum’ler. 

“ I’m thinkin’, my lord, that maun be 
a modern touch,’’ remarked Malcolm 
here, interrupting himself : “there wasna 
glaiss i’ thae times — was there?’’ 

“What do I know ?’’ said the marquis. 
“Go on with your story.’’ 

“But there’s mair intill ’t than that,’’ 
persisted Malcolm. “I doobt gien there 
was ony whusky i’ that times aither ; for 
I hard a gentleman say the ither day ’at 
hoo he had tastit the first whusky ’at was 
ever distillt in Scotian’, an’ horrible stuff 
it was, he said, though it was ’maist as 
auld as the forty-five.’’ 

“ Confound your long wind ! Go on,’’ 
said the marquis peremptorily. 

“We s’ ca’ ’t whusky, than, ony gait,’’ 
said Malcolm, and resumed: “The but- 
ler did again as he was bidden, an fiess 
{fetched) a tum’ler, or mairlikly a siller 
cup, an’ the prence took the decanter, or 
what it micht be, an’ filled it to the verra 
brim. The butler’s een ’maist startit 
frae ’s heid, but naebody said naething. 
He liftit it, greedy-like, an’ drank aff 
the whusky as gien ’t had been watter. 


MALCOLM. 


1 68 

‘ That’s middlin’,’ he said as he set it o’ 
the table again. They luikit to see him 
fa’ doon deid, but in place o’ that he be- 
goud to gether himsel’ a bit, an’ says he, 
‘ We brew the same drink i’ my country, 
but a wee mair pooerfu’.’ Syne he askit 
for a slice o’ boar-ham an’ a raw aipple ; 
an’ that was a’ he ate. But he took 
anither waucht {large draught^ o’ the 
whusky, an’ his een grew brichter, an’ 
the stanes aboot him began to flash 
again ; an’ my leddy admired him the 
mair that what wad hae felled ony ither 
man only waukened him up a bit. An’ 
syne he telled them hoo, laith to be 
fashous, he had gi’en orders till ’s menyie 
to be aff afore the mornin’ brak, an’ wait 
at the neist cheenge-hoose till he jined 
them ; ‘ Whaur,’ said the leddy, ‘ I trust 
ye’ll lat them wait, or else'sen’ for them.’ 
But the yerl sat an’ said never a word. 
The prence gae him ae glower, an’ de- 
clared that his leddy’s word was law to 
him : he wad bide till she wulled him to 
gang. At this her een shot fire ’maist 
like his ain, an’ she smilit as she had 
never smilit afore ; an’ the yerl cudna 
bide the sicht o’ ’t, but daurna interfere : 
he rase an’ left the room an’ them the- 
gether. 

“What passed atwixt the twa there 
was nane to tell, but or an hoor was by 
they cam oot upo’ the gairden-terrace 
thegither, han’ in han’, luikin baith o’ 
them as gran’ an’ as weel pleased as 
gien they had been king and queen. 
The lang an’ the short o’ ’t was, that the 
•same day at nicht the twa was merried. 
Naither o’ them wad hear o’ a priest. 
Say what the auld yerl cud, they wad 
7tot hear o’ sic a thing, an’ the leddy was 
’maist mair set agane ’t nor the prence. 
She wad be merried accordin’ to Scots 
law, she said, an’ wad hae nae ither 
'Ceremony, say ’at he likit. 

“A gran’ feast was gotten ready, an’ 
jist the meenute afore it was cairriet to 
’the ha’ the great bell o’ the castel yowlt 
• oot, an’ a’ the fowk o’ the hoose was 
gaithered i’ the coortyaird, an’ oot cam 
the twa afore them, han’ in han’, de- 
clarin’ themsel’s merried fowk ; the 
whilk, accordin’ to Scots law, was but 
ower guid a merriage. Syne they sat 


doon to their denner, and there they sat 
— no drinkin’ muckle, they say, but mer- 
rily enjoyin’ themsel’s, the leddy singin’ 
a sang noo an’ again, an’ the prence 
sayin’ he ance cud sing, but had forgot- 
ten the gait o’ ’t; but never a prayer 
said nor a blessin’ askit — oontil the clock 
chappit twal, whaurupon the prence and 
the prencess rase to gang to their bed — 
in a room whaur the king himsel’ aye 
sleepit whan he cam to see them. But 
there wasna ane o’ the men or the maids 
’t wad hae daured be their lanes wi’ that 
man, prence as he ca’d himsel’. 

“ A meenute, or barely twa, was ower 
whan a cry cam frae the king’s room — 
a fearfu’ cry, a lang, lang skreigh. The 
men an’ the maids luikit at ane anither 
wi’ awsome luiks, an’ ‘ He’s killin’ her !’ 
they a’ gaspit at ance. 

“Noo she was never a favorite wi’ ony 
ane o’ her ain fowk, but still they could- 
na hear sic a cry frae her ohn run to the 
yerl. 

“They fand him pacin’ up and doon 
the ha’, an’ luikin’ like a deid man in a 
rage o’ fear. But whan they telled him 
he only leuch at them, an’ ca’d them ill 
names, an’ said he had na hard a cheep. 
Sae they tuik naething by that, an’ gaed 
back trimlin’. 

“ Twa o’ them, a man an’ a maid, to 
hand hert in ane anither, gaed up to the 
door o’ the transe {passage) ’at led to 
the king’s room, but for a while they 
hard naething. Syne cam the soon’ like 
o’ moanin’ an’ greitin’ an’ prayin’. 

“The neist meenute they war back 
again amo’ the lave, luikin’ like twa 
corps. They had opent the door o’ the 
transe to hearken closer, an’ what sud 
they see there but the fiery een an’ the 
white teeth o’ the prence’s horse, lyin’ 
athort the door o’ the king’s room, wi’ ’s 
heid atween ’s fore feet, an’ keepin’ 
watch like a tyke {dog) ? 

“Er’ lang they bethoucht themsels’, 
an’ twa o’ them set oot an’ aff thegither 
for the priory — that’s whaur yer ain hoose 
o’ Lossie noo stan’s, my lord — to fess a 
priest. It wad be a guid twa hoor or 
they wan back, an’ a’ that time ilka noo 
an’ than the moanin’ an’ the beggin’ an’ 
the cryin’ wad come again. An’ the 


MALCOLM. 


169 


warder upo’ the heich tooer declared ’at 
ever sin’ midnicht the prence’s menyie, 
the haill twal’ o’ them, was careerin’ 
aboot the castel, roon’ an’ roon’, wi’ the 
een o’ their beasts lowin’, and their heids 
oot, an’ their manes up, an’ their tails 
fleein’ ahint them. He aye lost sicht o’ 
them whan they wan to the edge o’ the 
scaur, but roon’ they aye cam again upo’ 
the ither side, as gien there had been a 
ro’d whaur there was na even a ledge. 

“ The moment the priest’s horse set fut 
upo’ the drawbrig the puir leddy gae 
anither ougsome cry, a hantle waur nor 
the first, an’ up gat a suddent roar an’ a 
blast o’ win’ that maist cairried the castel 
there aff o’ the cliff intill the watter, an’ 
syne cam a flash o’ blue licht an’ a rum’- 
lin’. Efter that a’ was quaiet : it was a’ 
ower afore the priest wan athort the coort- 
yaird an’ up the stair. For he crossed 
himsel’ an’ gaed straucht for the bridal- 
chaumer. By this time the yerl had 
come up, an’ followed cooerin’ ahin’ the 
priest. 

“ Never a horse was i’ the transe ; an’ 
the priest, first layin’ the cross ’at hang 
frae ’s belt agane the door o’ the chaum- 
er, flang ’t open wi’oot ony ceremony, 
for ye ’ll alloo there was room for nane. 

“An’ what think ye was the first thing 
the yerl saw ? A great hole i’ the wa’ o’ 
the room, an’ the starry pleuch luikin’ in 
at it, an’ the sea lyin’ far doon afore him 
— as quaiet as the bride upo’ the bed, 
but a hantle bonnier to luik at ; for ilka 
steek that had been on her was brunt 
aff, an’ the bonny body o’ her was lyin’ 
a’ runklet an’ as black ’s a coal frae heid 
to fut; an’ the reek at rase frae ’t was 
heedeous. I needna say the bridegroom 
wasna there. Some fowk thoucht it a 
guid sign that he hadna cairriet the body 
wi’ him ; but maybe he was ower sud- 
dent scared by the fut o’ the priest’s horse 
upo’ the drawbrig, an’ dauredna bide his 
oncome. Sae the fower-fut stane wa’ 
had to flee afore him for a throu’-gang 
to the Prence o’ the Pooer o’ the Air. 
An’ yon’s the verra hole to this day, ’at 
ye was sae near ower weel acquaint wi’ 
yersel’, my leddy. For the yerl left the 
castel, and never a Colonsay has made 
his abode there sin’ syne. But some say 


’at the rizzon the castel cam to be desertit 
a’thegither was, that as aften as they 
biggit up the hole it fell oot again as 
sure ’s the day o’ the year cam roon’ 
whan it first happent. They say that at 
twal o’clock that same nicht the door o’ 
that room aye gaed tu, that naebody daur 
touch ’t, for the heat o’ the han’le o’ ’t ; 
an’ syne cam the skreighin’ an’ the 
moanin’ an’ the fearsome skelloch at the 
last, an’ a rum’le like thun’er ; an’ i’ the 
mornin’ there was the wa’ oot. The hole’s 
bigger noo, for a’ the decay o’ the castel 
has taen to slidin’ oot at it, an’ dootless 
it’ll spread an’ spread till the haill struc- 
tur vainishes — at least sae they say, my 
lord — but I wad hae a try at the haudin’ 
o’ ’t thegither for ’a that. I dinna see ’at 
the deil sud hae ’t a’ his ain gait, as gien 
we war a’ fleyt at him. Fowk hae three- 
pit upo’ me that there i’ the gloamin’ 
they hae seen an’ awsome face luikin’ 
in upo’ them throu’ that slap i’ the wa’ ; 
but I never believed it was onything but 
their ain fancy, though for a’ ’at I ken it 
may ha’ been something no canny. Still, 
I say, wha’s feart ? The 111 Man has no 
pooer ’cep ower his ain kin. We’re tellt 
to resist him an’ he’ll flee frae ’s.’’ 

“A good story, and well told,’’ said 
the marquis kindly. “ Don’t you think 
so, Florimel.?’’ 

“Yes, papa,’’ Lady Florimel answer- 
ed; “only he kept us waiting too long 
for the end of it.’’ 

“Some fowk, my leddy,’’ said Mal- 
colm, “ wad aye be at the hin’er en’ o’ 
a’thing. But for mjsel’, the mair pleased 
I was to be gaein’ ony gait, the mair I 
wad spin oot the ro’d till’t.’’ 

“ How much now of the story may be 
your own invention ?’’ said the marquis. 

“Ow! nae that muckle, my lord — jist 
a feow extras an’ partic’lars ’at micht 
weel hae been, wi’ an adjective or an 
adverb or sic-like here an’ there. I 
made ae mistak’, though : gien ’t was 
yon hole yonner, they bude till hae gane 
doon an’ no up the stair to their chaumer.’’ 

His lordship laughed, and again com- 
mending the tale rose : it was time to re- 
embark — an operation less arduous than 
before, for in the present state of the 
tide it was easy to bring the cutter so 


MALCOLM. 


170 

close to a low rock that even Lady Flori- 
mel could step on board. 

As they had now to beat to windward, 
Malcolm kept the tiller in his own hand. 
But indeed Lady Florimel did not want 
to steer : she was so much occupied with 
her thoughts that her hands must remain 
idle. 

Partly to turn them away from the 
more terrible portion of her adventure, 
she began to reflect upon her interview 
with Mrs. Catanach — if interview it 
could be called where she had seen no 
one. At first she was sorry that she had 
not told her father of it, and had the 
ruin searched ; but when she thought 
of the communication the woman had 
made to her, she came to the conclusion 
that it was, for various reasons — not to 
mention the probability that he would 
have set it all down to the workings of 
an unavoidably excited nervous condi- 
tion — better that she should mention it 
to no one but Duncan MacPhail. 

When they arrived at the harbor-quay 
they found the carriage waiting, but 
neither the marquis nor Lady Florimel 
thought of Malcolm’s foot, and he was 
left to limp painfully home. As he pass- 
ed Mrs. Catanach’s cottage he looked up : 
there were the blinds still drawn down, 
the door was shut and the place was 
silent as the grave. By the time he 
reached Lossie House his foot was very 
much swollen. When Mrs. Courthope 
saw it she sent him to bed at once and 
applied a poultice. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

DUNCAN’S DISCLOSURE. 

The night long Malcolm kept dream- 
ing of his fall ; and his dreams were 
worse than the reality, inasmuch as they 
invaiiably sent him sliding out of the 
breach to receive the cut on the rocks 
below. Very oddly, this catastrophe was 
always occasioned by the grasp of a hand 
on his ankle. Invariably also, just as 
he slipped, the face of the prince ap- 
peared in the breach, but it was at the 
same time the face of Mrs. Catanach. 

The next morning Mrs. Courthope 


found him feverish, and insisted on his 
remaining in bed — no small trial to one 
who had never been an hour ill in his 
life ; but he was suffering so much that 
he made little resistance. 

In the enforced quiescence, and under 
the excitement of pain and fever, Mal- 
colm first became aware how much the 
idea of Lady Florimel had at length pos- 
sessed him. But even in his own thought 
he never once came upon the phrase in 
love as representing his condition in re- 
gard to her : he only knew that he wor- 
shiped her, and would be overjoyed to 
die for her. The youth had about as lit- 
tle vanity as could well consist with indi- 
vidual coherence : if he was vain at all, 
it was neither of his intellectual nor per- 
sonal endowments, but of the few tunes 
he could play on his grandfather’s pipes. 
He could run and swim — rare accom- 
plishments amongst the fishermen — and 
was said to be the best dancer of them 
all ; but he never thought of such com- 
parison himself. The rescue of Lady 
Florimel made him very happy. He had 
been of service to her, but so far was he 
from cherishing a shadow of presump- 
tion that as he lay there he felt it would 
be utter content to live serving her for 
ever, even when he was old and wrinkled 
and gray like his grandfather : he never 
dreamed of her growing old and wrinkled 
and gray. 

A single sudden thought sufficed to 
scatter — not the devotion, but its peace. 
Of course she would marry some day, 
and what then ? He looked the inevit- 
able in the face, but as he looked that 
face grew an ugly one. He broke into 
a laugh: his soul had settled like a 
brooding cloud over the gulf that lay be- 
tween a fisher-lad and the daughter of a 
peer. But although he was no coxcomb, 
neither had he fed himself on romances, 
as Lady Florimel had been doing of late ; 
and although the laugh was quite honest- 
ly laughed at himself, it was nevertheless 
a bitter one. For again came the ques- 
tion, Why should an absurdity be a pos- 
sibility ? It was absurd, and yet possi- 
ble : there was the point. In mathe- 
matics it was not so : there, of two oppo- 
sites to prove one an absurdity was to 


MALCOLM. 


prove the other a fact. Neither in meta- 
physics was it so : there also an impos- 
sibility and an absurdity were one and 
the same thing. But here, in a region 
of infinitely more import to the human 
life than an eternity of mathematical 
truth, there was at least one absurdity 
which was yet inevitable — an absurdity, 
yet with a villainous attendance of direst 
heat, marrow-freezing cold, faintings and 
ravings and demoniacal laughter. 

Had it been a purely logical question 
he was dealing with, he might not have 
been quite puzzled; but to apply logic 
here, as he was attempting to do, was 
like — not like attacking a fortification 
with a penknife, for a penknife might 
win its way through the granite ribs 
of Cronstadt — it was like attacking an 
eclipse with a broomstick. There was 
a solution to the difficulty ; but as the 
difficulty itself was deeper than he knew, 
so the answer to it lay higher than he 
could reach — was in fact at once grand- 
er and finer than he was yet capable of 
understanding. 

His disjointed meditations were inter- 
rupted quite by the entrance of the man 
to whom alone of all men he could at 
the time have given a hearty welcome. 
The schoolmaster seated himself by his 
bedside, and they had a long talk. I 
had set down this talk, but came to the 
conclusion I had better not print it: 
ranging both high and wide, and touch- 
ing on points of vital importance, it was 
yet so odd that it would have been to 
too many of my readers but a chimaera 
tumbling in a vacuum, as they will read- 
ily allow when I tell them that it started 
from the question — which had arisen in 
Malcolm’s mind so long ago, but which 
he had not hitherto propounded to his 
friend — as to the consequences of a 
man’s marrying a mermaid; and that 
Malcolm, reversing its relations, pro- 
posed next the consequences of a man’s 
being in love with a ghost or an angel. 

“ I’m dreidfu’ tired o’ lyin’ here i’ my 
bed,” said Malcolm at length when, 
neither desiring to carry the conversa- 
tion further, a pause had intervened. ‘T 
dinna ken what I want. Whiles I think 
it’s the sun, whiles the win’, and whiles 


171 

the watter. But I canna rist. Haena 
ye a bit ballant ye could say till me, Mr. 
Graham ? There’s naething wad quaiet 
me like a ballant.” 

The schoolmaster thought for a few 
minutes, and then said, ‘‘I’ll give you 
one of my own if you like, Malcolm. I 
made it some twenty or thirty years ago.” 

‘‘That wad be a trate, sir,” returned 
Malcolm ; and the master, with perfect 
rhythm, and a modulation amounting 
almost to melody, repeated the following 
verses : 

The water ran doon frae the heich hope-heid {head 
of the valley), 

IVT a Rin, burnie, rin : 

It wimpled, an’ waggled, an’ sang a screed 
O’ nonsense, an’ wadna blin (cease), 

JVT its Rin, burnie, rin. 

Frae the hert o’ the warl' wL' a swirl an’ a sway. 

An’ a Rin, burnie, rin. 

That water lap clear frae the dark till the day. 

An’ singin’ awa’ did spin, 

WH its Rin, burnie, rin. 

Ae wee bit mile frae the heich hope-heid, 

Wi a Rin, burnie, rin, 

'Mang her yows an’ her lambs the herd-lassie stude. 
An' she loot a tear fa' in, 

Wf a Rin, burnie, rin. 

Frae the hert o' the maiden that tear-drap rase, 

W€ a Rin, burnie, rin : 

Wearily clim’in’ up narrow ways. 

There was but a drap to fa' in, 

Sae slow did that burnie rin. 

Twa wee bit miles frae the heich hope-heid, 

W€ a Rin, burnie, rin, 

Doon creepit a cowerin’ streakie o’ reid. 

An’ meltit awa' within, 

Wt’ a Rin, burnie, rin. 

Frae the hert o' a youth cam the tricklin’ reid, 

Wt a Rin, burnie, rin : 

It ran an’ ran till it left him deid. 

An' syne it dried up i’ the win'. 

An’ that burnie nae mair did rin. 

Whan the wimplin’ burn that frae three herts gaed 
Wt a Rin, burnie, rin. 

Cam to the lip o’ the sea sae braid. 

It curled an’ grued wi’ pain o’ sin; 

But it took that burnie in. ' 

‘‘ It’s a bonny, bonny sang,” said Mal- 
colm, ‘‘but I canna say I a’thegither like 
it.” 

‘‘Why not ?” asked Mr. Graham, with 
an inquiring smile. 

‘‘ Because the ocean sudna mak a mou’ 
at the puir earth-burnie that cudna help 
what ran intill ’t.” 

‘‘It took it in, though, and made it 


172 


MALCOLM. 


clean, for all the pain it couldn’t help 
either.” 

‘‘Weel, gien yu luik at it that gait!” 
said Malcolm. 

In the evening his grandfather came 
to see him, and sat down by his bedside, 
full of a tender anxiety which he was 
soon able to alleviate. 

“Wownded in ta hand and in ta foot,” 
said the seer: ‘‘what can it mean? It 
must mean something, Malcolm, my 
son.” 

‘‘Weel, daddy, we maun jist bide till 
we see,” said Malcolm cheerfully. 

A little talk followed, in the course of 
which it came into Malcolm’s head to 
tell his grandfather the dream he had 
had so much of the first night he had 
slept in that room, but more for the sake 
of something to talk about that would 
interest one who believed in all kinds of 
prefigurations than for any other reason. 

Duncan sat moodily silent for some 
time, and then, with a great heave of 
his broad chest, lifted up his head, like 
one who had formed a resolution, and 
said, ‘‘ The hour has come. She has long 
peen afrait to meet it, put it has come, 
and Allister will meet it. — She’ll not pe 
your cran’father, my son.” 

He spoke the words with perfect com- 
posure, but as soon as they were uttered 
burst into a wail and sobbed like a child. 

‘‘Ye’ll be my ain father, than?” said 
Malcolm. 

‘‘No, no, my son. She’ll not pe any- 
thing that’s your own at aall.” 

And the tears flowed down his chan- 
neled cheeks. 

For one moment Malcolm was silent, 
utterly bewildered. But he must com- 
fort the old man first, and think about 
what he had said afterward. ‘‘Ye’re my 
ain daddy, whatever ye are,” he said. 
‘‘Tell me a’ aboot it, daddy.” 

‘‘ She’ll tell you all she’ll pe knowing, 
my son, and she neffer told a lie efen to 
a Cawmill.” 

He began his story in haste, as if anx- 
ious to have it over, but had to pause 
often from fresh outbursts of grief. It 
contained nothing more of the essential 
than I have already recorded, .and Mal- 
colm was perplexed to think why what 


he had known all the time should affect 
him so much in the telling. But when 
he ended with the bitter cry, ‘‘And now 
you’ll pe loving her no more, my poy, 
my chilt, my Malcolm 1” he understood 
it. 

‘‘Daddy! daddy!” he cried, throwing 
his arms round his neck and kissing 
him, ‘‘I lo’e ye better nor ever. An’ 
weel I may !” 

‘‘But how can you, when you’ve cot 
none of ta plood in you, my son ?” per- 
sisted Duncan. 

‘‘I hae as muckle as ever I had, 
daddy.” 

‘‘Yes, put you’ll didn’t know.” 

‘‘But ye did, daddy.” 

‘‘Yes, and inteet she cannot tell why 
she’ll pe loving you so much herself aall 
ta time.” 

‘‘Weel, daddy, gien ye cud lo’e me 
sae weel, kennin’ me nae bluid’s bluid 
o’ yer ain, I canna help it : I maun lo’e 
ye mair nor ever, noo at I ken ’t tu. 
Daddy, daddy, I had nae claim upo’ ye, 
an’ ye hae been father an’ gran’father 
an’ a’ to me.” 

‘‘What could she do, Malcolm, my 
poy ? Ta chilt had no one, and she had. 
no one, and so it wass. You must pe 
her own poy, after aall. And she'll not pe 
wondering, put — It might pe — Yes, 
inteet not !” 

His voice sank to the murmurs of a 
half-uttered soliloquy, and as he mur- 
mured he stroked Malcolm’s cheek. 

‘‘What are ye efter noo, daddy?” ask- 
ed Malcolm. 

The only sign that Duncan heard the 
question was the complete silence that 
followed. When Malcolm repeated it 
he said something in Gaelic, but finished 
the sentence thus, apparently unaware 
of the change of language : ‘‘ Only how 
else should she pe loving you so much, 
Malcolm, my son ?” 

‘‘I ken what Maister Graham would 
say, daddy,” rejoined Malcolm at a 
half guess. 

‘‘ What would he say, my son ? He ’s 
a coot, man, your Master Graham. It 
could not pe without ta sem fathers and 
ta sem chief.” 

‘‘He wad say it was ’cause we war 


MALCOLM. 


a’ o’ ae bluid — ’cause we had a’ ae 
Father.” 

” Oh yes, no toubt ! We aall come 
from ta same first paarents, but tat will 
pe a ferry long way off, pefore ta clans 
cot tokether. -It’ll not pe holding ferry 
well now, my son. Tat wass pefore ta 
Cawmills.” 

"That’s no what Maister Graham 
would mean, daddy,” said Malcolm. 
"He wad mean that God was the Father 
o’ ’s a’, and sae we cudna help lo’in’ 
ane anither.” 

"No, tat cannot pe right, Malcolm, 
for then we should haf to love efery- 
pody. Now she loves you, my son, and 
she hates Cawmill of Clenlyon. She 
loves Mistress Partan when she’ll not pe 
too rude to her, and she hates tat Mis- 
tress Catanach. She’s a paad woman, 
tat, she’ll pe certain sure, though she’ll 
neffer saw her to speak to her. She’ll 
haf claaws to her poosoms.” 

"Weel, daddy, there was naething 
ither to gar ye lo’e me. I was jist a 
helpless human bein’, an’ sae, for that 
an’ nae ither rizzon, ye tuik a’ that fash 
wi’ me ! An’ for mysel’. I’m deid sure 
I cudna lo’e ye better gien ye war twise 
my gran’father.” 

"He’s her own poy !” cried the piper, 
much comforted ; and his hand sought 
his head and lighted gently upon it. 
" Put, maybe,” he went on, " she might 
not haf loved you so much if she hadn’t 
peen thinking sometimes — ” 

He checked himself. Malcolm’s ques- 
tions brought ho conclusion to the sen- 
tence, and a long silence followed. 

" Supposin’ I was to turn oot a Caw- 
mill ?” said Malcolm at length. 

The hand that was fondling his curls 
withdrew as if a serpent had bit it, and 
Diincan rose from his chair. 

"Wass it her own son to pe speaking 
such an efil thing ?” he said, in a tone 
of injured and sad expostulation. 

"For onything ye ken, daddy — ye 
canna tell but it mith be.” 

"Ton’t preathe it, my son!” cried 
Duncan in a voice of agony, as if he saw 
unfolding a fearful game the arch-ene- 
my had been playing for his soul. " Put 
it cannot pe,” he resumed instantly, "for 


173 

then how should she pe loving you, my 
son ?” 

"’Cause ye was in for that afore ye 
kent wha the puir beastie was.” 

" The tarling chilt ! She could not 
haf loved him if he had peen a Cawmill. 
Her soul would haf chumped pack from 
him as from ta snake in ta tree. Ta 
hate in her heart to ta plood of ta Caw- 
mill would have killed ta chilt of ta Caw- 
mill plood. No, Malcolm ! no, my son I” 

"Ye wadna hae me believe, daddy, 
that gien ye had kent by mark o’ hiv 
[hoof) an’ horn that the cratur they laid 
i’ yer lap was a Cawmill, ye wad hae 
risen up an’ looten it lie whaur it fell ?” 

" No, Malcolm, I would haf put my foot 
upon it, as I would on ta young fiper in 
ta heather.” 

"Gien I was to turn oot ane o’ that ill 
race, ye wad hate me, than, daddy, efter 
a’? Ochone, daddy I Ye wad be weel 
pleased to think hoo ye stack yer durk 
throu’ the ill han’ o’ me, an’ wadna rist 
till ye had it throu’ the waur hert. I 
doobt I had better up an’ awa’, daddy, 
for wha kens what ye mayna du to me ?” 

Malcolm made a movement to rise, 
and Duncan’s quick ears understood it. 
He sat down again by his bedside and 
threw his arms over him : " Lie town, lie 
town, my poy ! If you ket up, tat will 
pe you are a Cawmill. No, no, my son. 
You are ferry cruel to your own old dad- 
dy. She would pe too much sorry for 
her poy to hate him. It will pe so tread- 
ful to pe a Cawmill I No, no, my poy. 
She would take you to her poosom, and 
tat would trive ta Cawmill out of you. 
Put ton’t speak of it any more, my son, 
for it cannot pe. She must co now, for 
her pipes will pe waiting for her.” 

Malcolm feared he had ventured too 
far, for never before had his grandfather 
left him except for work. But the pos- 
sibility he had started might do some- 
thing to soften the dire endurance of his 
hatred. 

His thoughts turned to the new dark- 
ness let in upon his history and pros- 
pects. All at once the cry of the mad 
laird rang in his mind’s ear: "I dinna 
ken whaur I cam frae !” 

Duncan’s revelation brought with it 


174 


MALCOLM. 


nothing to be done, hardly anything to 
be thought — merely room for most shad- 
owy, most unfounded conjecture ; nay, 
not conjecture — nothing but the vaguest 
of castle-building. In merry mood he 
would henceforth be the son of some 
mighty man, with a boundless future of 
sunshine opening before him; in sad 
mood, the son of some strolling gypsy 
or worse — his very origin better forgot- 
ten, a disgrace to the existence for his 
share in which he had hitherto been 
peacefully thankful. 

Like a lurking phantom-shroud the sad 
mood leaped from the field of his specu- 
lation and wrapped him in its folds : sure 
enough, he was but a beggar’s brat. How 
henceforth was he to look Lady Florimel 
in the face ? Humble as he had believed 
his origin, he had hitherto been proud 
of it : with such a high-minded sire as 
he deemed his own, how could he be 
other ? But now ! Nevermore could he 
look one of his old companions in the 
face. They were all honorable men, he 
a base-born foundling ! 

He would tell Mr. Graham of course ; 
but what could Mr. Graham say to it ? 
The fact remained : he must leave Port- 
lossie. 

His mind went on brooding, specula- 
ting, devising. The evening sunk into 
the night, but he never knew he was in 
the dark until the housekeeper brought 
him a light. After a cup of tea his 
thoughts found pleasanter paths. One 
thing was certain : he must lay himself 
out, as he had never done before, to 
make Duncan MacPhail happy. With 
this one thing clear to both heart and 
mind he fell fast asleep. 


CHAPTER XLIIl. 

THE wizard’s chamber. 

He woke in the dark, with that strange 
feeling of bewilderment which accompa- 
nies the consciousness of having been 
waked : is it that the brain wakes before 
the mind, and like a servant unexpect- 
edly summoned does not know what to 
do, with its master from home ? or is it 
that the master wakes first, and the ser- 


vant is too sleepy to answer his call? 
Quickly coming to himself, however, he 
sought the cause of the perturbation now 
slowly ebbing. But the dark into which 
he stared could tell nothing; therefore 
he abandoned his eyes, took his station 
in his ears, and thence sent out his mes- 
sengers. But neither, for some moments, 
could the scouts of hearing come upon 
any sign. 

At length something seemed doubt- 
fully to touch the sense — ^the faintest sus- 
picion of a noise in the next room, the 
wizard’s chamber : it was enough to set 
Malcolm on the floor. Forgetting his 
wounded foot and lighting upon it, the 
agony it caused him dropped him at 
once on his hands and knees, and in 
this posture he crept into the passage. 
As soon as his head was outside his own 
door he saw a faint gleam of light com- 
ing from beneath that'of the next room. 
Advancing noiselessly and softly feeling 
for the latch, his hand encountered a 
bunch of keys depending from the lock, 
but happily did not set them jingling. 
As softly he lifted the latch, when Mmost 
of itself the door opened a couple of 
inches and with bated breath he saw the 
back of a figure he could not mistake — 
that of Mrs. Catanach. She was stoop- 
ing by the side of a tent-bed much like 
his own, fumbling with the bottom hem 
of one of the check curtains, which she 
was holding toward the light of a lantern 
on a chair. Suddenly she turned her 
face to the door, as if apprehending a 
presence : as suddenly he closed it and 
turned the key in the lock. To do so 
he had to use considerable force, and 
concluded its grating sound had been 
what waked him. 

Having thus secured the prowler, he 
crept back to his room, considering vs hat 
he should do next. The speedy result 
of his cogitations was that he indued his 
nether garments, though with difficulty 
from the size of his foot, thrust his head 
and arms through a jersey, and set out 
on hands and knees for an awkward 
crawl to Lord Lossie’s bedroom. 

It was a painful journey, especially 
down the two spiral stone stairs which 
led to the first floor where it lay. As he 


MALCOLM. 


175 


went, Malcolm resolved, in order to avoid 
rousing needless observers, to enter the 
room, if possible, before waking the 
marquis. 

The door opened noiselessly. A night- 
light, afloat in a crystal cup, revealed the 
bed, and his master asleep, with one arm 
lying on the crimson quilt. He crept in, 
closed the door behind him, advanced 
halfway to the bed, and in a low voice 
x ailed the marquis. 

Lord Lossie started up on his elbow, 
aii.i without a moment’s consideration 
seized one of a brace of pistols which 
lay on a table by his side, and fired. 
The ball went with a sharp thud into the 
thick mahogany door. 

“My lord! my lord !’’ cried Malcolm, 
“it’s only me !’’ 

“And who the devil are you ?’’ return- 
ed the marquis, catching up the second 
pistol. 

“Malcolm, yer ain henchman, my 
lord.’’ 

“ Damn you ! what are you about there ? 
Get up. What are you after there, crawl- 
ing like a thief?” 

As he spoke he leaped from the bed 
and seized Malcolm by the back of the 
neck. 

“It’s a mercy I wasna mair like an 
honest man,” said Malcolm, “or that 
bullet wad hae been throu’ the hams o’ 
me. Yer lordship’s a wheen ower-rash.” 

“ Rash, you rascal I” cried Lord Lossie, 
“ when a fellow comes into my room on 
his hands and knees in the middle of 
the night ! Get up and tell me what you 
are after, or by Jove I’ll break every 
bone in your body.” 

A kick from his bare foot in Malcolm’s 
ribs fitly closed the sentence. 

“Ye are ower-rash, my lord,” persisted 
Malcolm. “I canna get up. I hae a fit 
the size o’ a sma’ buoy.” 

“Speak, then, you rascal!” said his 
lordship, loosening his hold and retreat- 
ing a few steps, with the pistol cocked in 
his hand. 

“ Dinna ye think it wad be better to 
lock the door, for fear the shot sud bring 
ony o’ the fowk ?” suggested Malcolm 
as he rose to his knees and leaned his 
hands on a chair. 


“You’re bent on murdering me, are 
you, then ?” said the marquis, beginning 
to come to himself and see the ludicrous- 
ness of the situation. 

“Gien I had been that, my lord, I 
wadna hae waukent ye up first.” 

“Well, what the devil is it all about? 
You needn’t think any of the men will 
come. They’re a pack of the greatest 
cowards ever breathed.” 

“Weel, my lord, I hae gruppit her at 
last, an’ I bude to come an’ tell ye.” 

“Leave your beastly gibberish. You 
can speak what at least resembles Eng- 
lish when you like.” 

“Weel, my lord, I hae her unner lock 
an’ keye.” 

“Who, in the name of Satan ?” 

“Mistress Catanach, my lord.” 

“ Damn her eyes ! What’s she to me 
that I should be waked out of a good 
sleep for herf' 

“ That’s what I wad fain yer lordship 
kent: /dinna.” 

“ None of your riddles ! Explain your- 
self, and make haste : I want to go to 
bed again.” 

“ ’Deed, yer lordship maun jist pit on 
yer claes an’ come wi’ me.” 

“ Where to ?” 

“ To the warlock’s chaumer, my lord 
— whaur that ill wuman remains ‘ in du- 
rance vile,’ as Spenser wad say, but no 
sae vile’s hersel’, I doobt.” 

Thus arrived at length, with a clear 
road before him, at the opening of his 
case, Malcolm told in few words what 
had fallen out. As he went on the mar- 
quis grew interested, and by the time he 
had finished had got himself into dress- 
ing-gown and slippers. 

“Wadna ye tak yer pistol ?” suggested 
Malcolm slyly. 

“What ! to meet a woman ?” said his 
lordship. 

“Ow na! but wha kens there micht- 
na be anither murderer aboot? There 
micht be twa in ae nicht.” 

Impertinent as was Malcolm’s humor, 
his master did not take it amiss : he 
lighted a candle, told him to lead the 
way, and took his revenge by making 
joke after joke upon him as he crawled 
along. With the upper regions of his 


176 


MALCOLM, 


house the marquis was as little acquaint- 
ed as with those of his nature, and re- 
quired a guide. 

Arrived at length at the wizard’s cham- 
ber, they listened at the door for a mo- 
ment, but heard nothing : neither was 
there any light visible at its lines of 
junction. Malcolm turned the key, and 
the marquis stood close behind, ready to 
enter. But the moment the door was 
unlocked it was pulled open violently, 
and Mrs. Catanach, looking too high to 
see Malcolm, who was on his knees, 
aimed a good blow at the face she did 
see, in the hope, no doubt, of thus mak- 
ing her escape. But it fell short, being 
countered by Malcolm’s head in the 
softest part of her person, with the result 
of a clear entrance. The marquis burst 
out laughing, and stepped into the room 
with a rough Joke. Malcolm remained 
in the doorway. 

“My lord,’’ said Mrs. Catanach, gath- 
ering herself together, and rising little 
the worse, save in temper, for the treat- 
ment he had commented upon, “I have 
a word for your lordship’s own ear.’’ 

“Your right to be there does stand in 
need of explanation,’’ said the marquis. 

She walked up to him with confidence. 
“You shall have an explanation, my 
lord,’’ she said — “such as shall be my 
full quittance for intrusion even at this 
untimely hour of the night.’’ 

“Say on, then,’’ returned his lordship, 

“Send that boy away, then, my lord.’’ 

“I prefer having him stay,’’ said the 
marquis. 

“ Not a word shall cross my lips till 
he’s gone,’’ persisted Mrs. Catanach. 
“ I know him too well. Awa’ wi’ ye, ye 
deil’s buckie !’’ she continued, turning 
to Malcolm. “ I ken mair aboot you 
nor ye ken aboot yersel’', an deil hae’t I 
ken o’ guid to you or yours ! But I ’s 
gar ye lauch o’ the wrang side o’, your 
mou’ yet, my man.’’ 

Malcolm, who had seated himself on 
the threshold, only laughed and looked 
reference to his master. 

“Your lordship was never in the way 
of being frightened at a woman,’’ said 
Mrs. Catanach, with an ugly expression 
of insinuation. 


The marquis shrugged his shoulders. 
“That depends,’’ he said. Then turn- 
ing to Malcolm, “Go along,’’ he added; 
“only keep within call: I may want 
you.’’ 

“Nane o’ yer hearkenin’ at the key- 
hole, though, or I s’ lug-mark ye, ye 

!’’ said Mrs. Catanach, finishing the 

sentence none the more mildly that she 
did it only in her heart. 

“ I wadna hae ye believe a' ’at she 
says, my lord,’’ said Malcolm with a sig- 
nificant smile as he turned to creep away. 

He closed the door behind him, and 
lest Mrs. Catanach should repossess her- 
self of the key, drew it from the lock, 
and removing a few yards sat down ip 
the passage by his own door. A good 
many minutes passed, during which he 
heard not a sound. 

At length the door opened and his 
lordship came out. Malcolm looked up, 
and saw the light of the candle the mar- 
quis carried reflected from a face like 
that of a corpse. Different as they were, 
Malcolm could not help thinking of the 
only dead face he had ever seen. It 
terrified him for the moment in which it 
passed without looking at him. 

“My lord,” said Malcolm gently. 

His master made no reply. 

“My lord,” cried Malcolm, hurriedly 
pursuing him with his voice, “am I to 
lea’ the keyes wi’ yon hurdon and lat 
her open what doors she likes ?” 

“Go to bed,” said the marquis angrily, 
“and leave the woman alone;” with 
which words he turned into the adjoin- 
ing passage and disappeared. 

Mrs. Catanach had not come out of 
the wizard’s chamber, and for a moment 
Malcolm felt strongly tempted to lock 
her in once more. But he reflected that 
he had no right to do so after what his 
lordship had said — else, he declared to 
himself he would have given her at 
least as good a fright as she seemed to 
have given his master, to whom he had 
no doubt she had been telling some hor- 
rible lies. He withdrew, therefore, into 
his room, to lie pondering again for a 
wakeful while. 

This horrible woman claimed, then, 
to know more concerning him than his 


/ 


MALCOLM. 


177 


so-called grandfather, and, from her pro- 
fession, it was likely enough ; but infor- 
mation from her was hopeless, at least 
until her own evil time came ; and then, 
how was any, one to believe what she 
might choose to say ? So long, however, 
as she did not claim him for her own, 
she could, he thought, do him no hurt 
he would be afraid to meet. 

But what could she be about in that 
room still ? She might have gone, 
though, without the fall of her soft fat 
foot once betraying her. 

Again he got out of bed and crept to 
the wizard’s door, and listened. But all 
was still. He tried to open it, but could 
not : Mrs. Catanach was doubtless spend- 
ing the night there, and perhaps at that 
moment lay, evil conscience and all, fast 
asleep in the tent-bed. He withdrew 
once more, wondering whether she was 
aware that he occupied the next room ; 
and having for the first time taken care 
to fasten his own door, got into bed, 
finally this time, and fell asleep. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE HERMIT. 

Malcolm had flattered himself that 
he would at least be able to visit his 
grandfather the next day, but instead of 
that he did not even make an attempt 
to rise, head as well as foot aching so 
much that he felt unfit for the least ex- 
ertion — a phase of being he had never 
hitherto known. Mrs. Courthope insist- 
ed on advice, and the result was that a 
whole week passed before he was allowj 
ed to leave his room. 

In the mean time a whisper awoke 
and passed from mouth to mouth in all 
directions through the little burgh — 
whence arising only one could tell, for 
even her mouthpiece. Miss Horn’s Jean, 
was such a mere tool in the midwife’s 
hands that she never doubted but Mrs. 
Catanach was, as she said, only telling 
the tale as it was told to her. Mrs. Cat- 
anach, moreover, absolutely certain that 
no threats would render Jean capable 
of holding her tongue, had so impressed 
upon her the terrible consequences of 
12 


repeating what she had told her that the 
moment the echo of her own utterances 
began to return to her own ears, she 
began to profess an utter disbelief in the 
whole matter — the precise result Mrs. 
Catanach had foreseen and intended. 
Now she lay unsuspected behind Jean, 
as behind a wall whose door was built 
up, for she had so graduated her threats, 
gathering the fullest and vaguest terrors 
of her supernatural powers about her 
name, that while Jean dared, with many 
misgivings, to tamper with the secret 
itself, she dared not once mention Mrs. 
Catanach in connection with it. For 
Mrs. Catanach herself, she never alluded 
to the subject, and indeed when it was 
mentioned in her hearing pretended to 
avoid it ; but at the' same time she took 
good care that her silence should be not 
only eloquent, but discreetly so — that is, 
implying neither more nor less than she 
wished to be believed. 

The whisper, in its first germinal sprout, 
was merely that Malcolm was not a Mac- 
Phail and even in its second stage it 
only amounted to this, that neither was 
he the grandson of old Duncan. 

In the third stage of its development 
it became the assertion that Malcolm was 
the son of somebody of consequence ; 
and in the fourth, that a certain person, 
not yet named, lay under shrewd sus- 
picion. 

The fifth and final form it took was, 
that Malcolm was the son of Mrs. Stew- 
art of Gersefell, who had been led to be- 
lieve that he died within a few days of 
his birth, whereas he had in fact been 
carried off and committed to the care of 
Duncan MacPhail, who drew a secret 
annual stipend of no small amount in 
consequence ; whence indeed his well- 
known riches. 

Concerning this final form of the whis- 
per, a few of the women of the burgh 
believed or thought or fancied they re- 
membered both the birth and reported 
death of the child in question, also cer- 
tain rumors afloat at the time which c.-ist 
an air of probability over the new read- 
ing of his fate. In circles more remote 
from authentic sources the general re- 
port met with remarkable embellish- 


178 


MALCOLM. 


ments, but the framework of the rumor 
— what I may call the bones of it — re- 
mained undisputed. 

From Mrs. Catanach’s behavior every 
one believed that she knew all about the 
affair, but no one had a suspicion that 
she was the hidden fountain and prime 
mover of the report : so far to the con- 
trary was it that people generally antici- 
pated a frightful, result for her when the 
truth came to be known, for Mrs. Stew- 
art would follow her with all the ven- 
geance of a bereaved tigress. Some in- 
deed there were who fancied that the 
mother, if not in full complicity with the 
midwife, had at least given her consent 
to the arrangement ; but these were not 
a little shaken in their opinion when at 
length Mrs. Stewart herself began to fig- 
■ ure more immediately in the affair, and 
it was witnessed that she had herself 
begun to search into the report. Cer- 
tain it was that she had dashed into the 
town in a carriage and pair, the horses 
covered with foam, and had hurried, 
quite raised-like, from house to house 
prosecuting inquiries. It was said that 
finding at length, after much labor, that 
she could arrive at no certainty even as 
to the first promulgator of the assertion, 
she had a terrible fit of crying, and pro- 
fessed herself unable, much as she would 
have wished it, to believe a word of the 
report : it was far too good news to be 
• true ; no such luck ever fell to her share ; 
. and so on. That she did not go near 
Duncan MacPhail was accounted for by 
tthe reflection that on the supposition 
.itself he was of the opposite party, and 
'.the truth was not to be looked for from 
i.him. 

At length it came to be known that, 
strongly urged and battling with a re- 
pugnance all but invincible, she* had 
gone to see Mrs. Catanach, and had 
issued absolutely radiant with joy, de- 
claring that she was now perfectly satis- 
fied, and as soon as she had communi- 
cated with the young man himself, would, 
without compromising any one, take what 
legal steps might be necessary to his rec- 
. ognition as her son. 

Although, however, these things had 
been going on all the week that Malcolm 


was confined to his room, they had not 
reached this last point until after he was 
out again, and meantime not a whisper of 
them had come to his or Duncan’s ears. 
Had they been still in the Seaton, one 
or other of the traveling ripples of talk 
must have found them ; but Duncan had 
come and gone between his cottage and 
Malcolm’s bedside without one single 
downy feather from the still widening 
flap of the wings of Fame ever dropping 
on him ; and the only persons who vis- 
ited Malcolm besides were the doctor, 
too discreet in his office to mix himself 
up with gossip ; Mr. Graham, to whom 
nobody, except it had been Miss Horn, 
whom he had not seen for a fortnight, 
would have dreamed of mentioning such 
a subject; and Mrs. Courthope, not only 
discreet like the doctor, but shy of such 
discourse as any reference to the rumor 
must usher in its train. 

At length he was sufficiently recover- 
ed to walk to his grandfather’s cottage, 
but only now for the first time had he a 
notion of how far bodily condition can 
reach in the oppression and overcloud- 
ing of the spiritual atmosphere. “Gien 
I be like this,” he said to himself, "what 
maun the weather be like aneth yon 
hump o’ the laird’s ?” Now also for the 
first time he understood what Mr. Gra- 
ham had meant when he told him that 
he only was a strong man who was strong 
in weakness ; he only a brave man who, 
inhabiting trembling, yet faced his foe ; 
he only a true man who, tempted by 
good, yet abstained. 

Duncan received him with delight, 
made him sit in his own old chair, got 
a cup of tea and waited upon him with 
the tenderness of a woman. While he 
drank his tea Malcolm recounted his last 
adventure in connection with the wiz- 
ard’s chamber. 

” Tat will pe ta ped she’ll saw in her 
feeshon,” said Duncan, whose very eyes 
seemed to listen to the tale. 

When Malcolm came to Mrs. Cata- 
nach’s assertion that she knew more of 
him than he did himself, ” Then she pe- 
liefs ta voman does, my poy. We are 
aall poth of us in ta efil voman’s pow- 
er,” said Duncan sadly. 


MALCOLM. 


“ Never a hair, daddy !” cried Malcolm. 
“A’ pooer ’s i’ the ban’s o’ ane, an’ that’s 
no her maister. Ken she what she likes, 
she canna pairt you an’ me, daddy.” 

“God forpid !” responded Duncan. 
“ But we must pe on our kard.” , 

Close by the cottage stood an ivy-grown 
bridge, of old leading the king’s high- 
way across the burn to the Auld Toon, 
but now leading only to the flower-gar- 
den. Eager for the open air of which he 
had been so long deprived, and hoping 
that he might meet the marquis or Lady 
Florimel, Malcolm would have had his 
grandfather accompany him thither ; but 
Duncan declined, for he had not yet at- 
tended to the lamps, and Malcolm there- 
fore went alone. 

He was slowly wandering, where never 
wind blew, betwixt rows of stately holly- 
hocks, on which his eyes fed while his 
ears were filled with the sweet noises of 
a little fountain issuing from the upturn- 
ed beak of a marble swan, which a mar- 
ble urchin sought in vain to check by 
squeezing the long throat of the bird, 
when the sounds of its many-toned fall 
in the granite basin seemed suddenly 
centupled on every side, and Malcolm 
found himself caught in a tremendous 
shower. Prudent enough to avoid get- 
ting wet in the present state of his health, 
he made for an arbor he saw near by on 
the steep side of the valley — one he had 
never before happened to notice. 

Now it chanced that Lord Lossie him- 
self was in the garden, and, caught also 
by the rain while feeding some pet gold- 
fishes in a pond, betook himself to ^the 
same summer-house, following Malcolm. 

Entering the arbor, Malcolm was about 
to seat himself until the shower should 
be over, when, perceiving a mossy arch- 
ed entrance to a gloomy recess in the 
rock behind, he w'ent to peep into it, 
curious to see what sort of a place it 
was. 

Now the foolish whim of a past genera- 
tion had, in the farthest corner of the 
recess and sideways from the door, seat- 
ed the figure of a hermit, whose jointed 
limbs were so furnished with springs and 
so connected with the stone that floored 
the entrance, that as soon as a foot press- 


179 

ed the threshold he rose, advanced a step 
and held out his hand. 

The moment, therefore, Malcolm step- 
ped in, up rose a pale, hollow-cheeked, 
emaciated man, with eyes that stared 
glassily, made a long skeleton-like stride 
toward him, and held out a huge bony 
hand, rather, as it seemed, with the in- 
tent of clutching than of greeting him. 
An unaccountable horror seized him : 
with a gasp which had nearly become 
a cry he staggered backward out of the 
cave. It seemed to add to his horror 
that the man did not follow — remained 
lurking in the obscurity behind. In the 
arbor Malcolm turned — turned to flee, 
though why or from what he had scarce 
an idea. 

But when he turned he encountered 
the marquis, who was just entering the 
arbor. “Well, MacPhail,” he said kind- 
ly, “I’m glad — ” But his glance be- 
came fixed in a stare : he changed color, 
and did not finish his sentence. 

“ I beg yer lordship’s pardon,” said 
Malcolm, wondering through all his per- 
turbation at the look he had brought on 
his master’s face : “I didna ken ye was 
at han’.” 

“What the devil makes you look like 
that ?” said the marquis, plainly with an 
effort to recover himself. 

Malcolm gave a hurried glance over 
his shoulder. 

“Ah, I see !” said his lordship with a 
mechanical kind of smile, very unlike 
his usual one: “you’ve never been in 
there before ?” 

“ No, my lord.” 

“And you got a fright ?” 

“ Ken ye wha’s that in there, my lord?” 

“You booby! It’s nothing but a dum- 
my with springs, and — and — all damned 
tomfoolery.” 

While he spoke his mouth twitched 
oddly, but instead of his bursting into 
the laugh of enjoyment natural to him 
at the discomfiture of another, his mouth 
kept on twitching and his eyes staring. 

“Ye maun hae seen him yersel’ ower 
my shouther, my lord,” hinted Malcolm. 

“ I saw your face, and that was enough 
to — ” But the marquis did not finish 
the sentence. 


i8o 


MALCOLM. 


“ Weel, ’cep it was the oonnaiteral luik 
o’ he thing — no human, an’ yet sae 
dooms like it — I cannot accoont for the 
grue or the trimmle ’at cam ower me, 
my lord. I never fan’ onything like it i’ 
my life afore. An’ even noo ’at I unner- 
stan’ what it is, I kenna what wad gar me 
luik the boody [bogie) i’ the face again.” 

” Go in at once,” said the marquis 
fiercely. 

Malcolm looked him full in the eyes : 
‘‘Ye mean what ye say, my lord ?” 

‘‘Yes, by God!” replied the marquis, 
with an expression I can describe only as 
of almost savage solemnity. 

Malcolm stood silent for one moment. 

‘‘Do you think I’ll have a man about 
me that has no more courage than — than 
— a — woman?” said his master, con- 
cluding with an effort. 

‘‘ I was jist turnin’ ower an auld ques- 
ton, my lord — whether it be lawfu’ to 
obey a tyrant. But it’s nae worth stan’- 
in’ oot upo’. I s’ gang.” 

He turned to the arch, placed a hand 
on each side of it, and leaning forward 
with outstretched neck peeped cautious- 
ly in, as if it were the den of a wild beast. 
The moment he saw the figure, seated 
on a stool, he was seized with the same 
unaccountable agitation, and drew back 
shivering. 

‘‘Go in 1” shouted the marquis. 

Most Britons would count obedience 
to such a command slavish, but Mal- 
colm’s idea of liberty differed so far from 
that of most Britons that he felt if now 
he refused to obey the marquis he might 
be a slave for ever ; for he had already 
learned to recognize and abhor that sla- 
very which is not the less the root of all 
other slaveries that it remains occult in 
proportion to its potency — self-slavery. 
He must and would conquer this whim, 
antipathy or whatever the loathing might 
be : it was a grand chance given him of 
proving his will supreme — that is, him- 
self a free man. He drew himself up 
with a full breath and stepped within 
the arch. Up rose the horror again, 
jerked itself toward him with a clank 
and held out its hand. Malcolm seized 
it with such a gripe that its fingers came 
off in his grasp. 


‘‘Will that du, my lord?” he said 
calmly, turning a face rigid with hidden 
conflict and gleaming white from the 
framework of the arch upon his master, 
whose eyes seemed to devour him. 

‘‘ Come out,” said the marquis in a 
voice that seemed to belong to some one 
else. 

‘‘ I hae blaudit yer playock, my lord,” 
said Malcolm ruefully as he stepped 
from the cave and held out the fingers. 

Lord Lossie turned and left the arbor. 

Had Malcolm followed his inclination 
he would have fled from it, but he mas- 
tered himself still, and walked quietly out. 
The marquis was pacing, with downbent 
head and hasty strides, up the garden : 
Malcolm turned the other way. 

The shower was over, and the sun was 
drawing out millions of mimic suns from 
the drops that hung for a moment ere 
they fell from flower and bush and great 
tree. But Malcolm saw nothing. Per- 
plexed with himself, and more perplexed 
yet with the behavior of his master, he 
went back to his grandfather’s cottage, 
and as soon as he came in recounted to 
him the whole occurrence.. 

‘‘ He had a feeshon,” said the bard 
with wide eyes. ‘‘He comes of a race 
that sees.” 

‘‘What cud the veesion hae been, 
daddy ?” 

‘‘Tat she knows not, for ta feeshon tid 
not come to her,” said the piper solemnly. 

Had the marquis had his vision in 
London, he would have gone straight to 
his study, as he called it, not without a 
sense of the absurdity involved, opened 
a certain cabinet and drawn out a cer- 
tain hidden drawer : being at Lossie, he 
walked up the glen of the burn to the 
bare hill overlooking the House, the roy- 
al burgh, the great sea and his own lands 
lying far and wide around him. But all 
the time he saw nothing of these : he 
saw but the low white forehead of his 
vision, a mouth of sweetness and hazel 
eyes that looked into his very soul. 

Malcolm walked back to the House, 
clomb the narrow duct of an ancient 
stone stair thaL went screwing like a 
great auger through the pile from top to 
bottom, sought the wide lonely garret. 


MALCOLM. 


l8l 


flung himself upon his bed, and from 
his pillow gazed through the little dor- 
mer window on the pale blue skies fleck- 
ed with cold white clouds, while in his 
mind’s eye he saw the foliage beneath 
burning in the flames of slow decay, 
diverse as if each of the seven in the 
prismatic chord had chosen and seared 
its own : the first nor’-easter that drove 
the flocks of Neptune on the sands would 
sweep its ashes away. Life, he said to 
himself, was but a poor gray kind of 
thing, after all. The peacock summer 
had folded its gorgeous train, and the 
soul within him had lost its purple and 
green, its gold and blue. He never 
thought of asking how much of the sad- 
ness was owing to bodily conditions with 
which he was little acquainted, and to 
compelled idleness in one accustomed 
to an active life. But if he had, the sor- 
rowful probabilities of life would have 
seemed just the same. And indeed he 
might have argued that to be subject to 
any evil from a cause inadequate only 
involves an absurdity that embitters the 
pain by its mockery. He had yet to 
learn what faith can do, in the revela- 
tion of the Moodless, for the subjugation 
of mood to will. 

As he lay thus weighed upon, rather 
than pondering, his eye fell on the bunch 
of keys which he had taken from the 
door of the wizard’s chamber, and he 
wondered that Mrs. Courthope had not 
seen and taken them — apparently had 
not missed them. And the chamber 
doomed to perpetual desertion lying all 
the time open to any stray foot ! Once 
more, at least, he must go and turn the 
key in the lock. 

As he went the desire awoke to look 
again into the chamber, for that night 
he had neither light nor time enough to 
gain other than the vaguest impression 
of it. 

But for no lifting of the latch would 
the door open. How could the woman 
— witch she must be — have lockfed it.? 
He proceeded to unlock it. He tried 
one key, then another. He went over 


the whole bunch. Mystery upon mys- 
tery ! not one of them would turn. Be- 
thinking himself, he began to try them 
the other way, and soon found one to 
throw the bolt on. He turned it in the 
contrary direction, and it threw the bolt 
off : still the door remained immovable. 
It must then — awful thought ! — be fast 
on the inside. Was the woman’s body 
lying there behind those check curtains? 
Would it lie there until it vanished, like 
that of the wizard — vanished utterly, 
bones and all — to a little dust, which one 
day a housemaid might sweep up in a 
pan ? 

On the other hand, if she had got 
shut in, would she not have made noise 
enough to be heard ? He had been day 
and night in the next room. But it was 
not a spring lock, and how could that 
have happened ? Or would she not have 
been missed and inquiry made after her ? 
Only such an inquiry might well have 
never turned in the direction of Lossie 
House, and he might never have heard 
of it if it had. 

Anyhow, he must do something ; and 
the first rational movement would clear- 
ly be to find out quietly for himself 
whether the woman was actually missing 
or not. 

Tired as he was, he set out at once for 
the burgh, and the first person he saw 
was Mrs. Catanach standing on her door- 
step and shading her eyes with her hand 
as she looked away out to the horizon 
over the roofs of the Seaton. He went 
no farther. 

In the evening he found an opportunity 
of telling his master how the room was 
strangely closed, but his lordship pooh- 
poohed, and said something must have 
gone wrong with the clumsy old lock. 

With vague foresight, Malcolm took 
its key from the bunch, and, watching 
his opportunity, unseen hung the rest 
on their proper nail in the housekeeper’s 
room. Then, having made sure that the 
door of the wizard’s chamber was locked, 
he laid the key away in his own chest. 


4 




CHAPTER XLV. 

MR. CAIRNS AND THE MARQUIS. 

'’T^HE religious movement amongst the 
-L fisher-folk was still going on. Their 
meeting was now held often during the 
week, and at the same hour on the Sun- 
day as other people met at church. Nor 
was it any wonder that, having partici- 
pated in the fervor which pervaded their 
gatherings in the cave, they should have 
come to feel the so-called divine service 
in the churches of their respective par- 
ishes a dull, cold, lifeless and therefore 
unhelpful ordinance, and at length, re- 
garding it as composed of beggarly ele- 
ments, breathing of bondage, to fill the 
Baillies’ Barn three times every Sunday 
— a reverential and eager congregation. 

Now, had they confined their prayers 
and exhortations to those which, from 
an ecclesiastical point of view, constitute 
the unholy days of the week, Mr. Cairns 
would have neither condescended nor 
presumed to take any notice of them ; 
but when the bird’s-eye view from his 
pulpit began to show patches of bare 
boards where human forms had wont to 
appear, and when these plague-spots had 
not only lasted -through successive Sun- 
days, but had begun to spread more rap- 
idly, he began to think it time to put a 
stop to such fanatical aberrations, the 
result of pride and spiritual presumption 
— hostile toward God and rebellious to- 
ward their lawful rulers and instructors. 

For what an absurdity it was that the 
Spirit of truth should have anything to 
communicate to illiterate and vulgar per- 
sons except through the mouths of those 
to whom had been committed the dispen- 
sation of the means of grace ! Whatever 
wind might blow, except from their bel- 
lows, was to Mr. Cairns, at least, not even 
of doubtful origin. Indeed, the priests 
of every religion, taken in class, have 
been the slowest to recognize the wind 
of the Spirit, and the quickest to tell 

182 


whence the blowing came and whither 
it went, even should it have blown first 
on their side of the hedge. And how 
could it be otherwise ? How should they 
recognize as a revival the motions of life 
unfelt in their own hearts, where it was 
most required ? What could they know 
of doubts and fears, terrors and humil- 
iations, agonies of prayer, ecstasies of 
relief and thanksgiving, who regarded 
their high calling as a profession, with 
social claims and ecclesiastical rights, 
and even as such had so little respect 
for it that they talked of it themselves as 
the cloth? How could such a man as 
Mr. Cairns, looking down from the height 
of his great soberness and the dignity 
of possessing the oracles and the ordi- 
nances, do other than contemn the en- 
thusiasms and excitements of ignorant 
repentance ? How could such as he 
recognize in the babble of babes the 
slightest indication of the revealing of 
truths hid from the wise and prudent ? — 
especially since their rejoicing also was 
that of babes, hence carnal, and accom- 
panied by all the weakness and some of 
the vices which it had required the ut- 
most energy of the prince of apostles 
to purge from one at least of the early 
churches. 

He might, however, have sought some 
foundation for a true judgment in a per- 
sonal knowledge of their doctrine and 
collective behavior ; but instead of go- 
ing to hear what the babblers had to 
say, and thus satisfying himself whether 
the leaders of the movement spoke the 
words of truth and soberness or of dis- 
cord and denial — whether their teaching 
and their prayers were on the side of 
order and law or tending to sedition — 
he turned a ready ear to all reports afloat 
concerning them, and, misjudging them 
utterly, made up his mind to use all law- 
ful means for putting an end to their 
devotions and exhortations. One fact 


MALCOLM. 


he either had not heard or made no ac- 
count of — that the public-houses in the 
villages whence these assemblies were 
chiefly gathered had already come to be 
all but deserted. 

Alone, then, and unsupported by one 
of his brethren of the presbytery, even 
of those who suffered like himself, he re- 
paired to Lossie House and laid before 
the marquis the whole matter from his 
point of view — that the tabernacles of 
the Lord were deserted for dens and 
caves of the earth ; that fellows so void 
of learning as not to be able to put a 
sentence together or talk decent English 
(a censure at which Lord Lossie smiled, 
for his ears were accustomed to a differ- 
ent quality of English from that which 
now invaded them) took upon them- 
selves to expound the Scriptures ; that 
they taught antinomianism (for which 
assertion, it must be confessed, there was 
some apparent ground) and were at the 
same time suspected of Arminianism and 
anabaptism ; that, in a word, they were 
a terrible disgrace to the godly and hith- 
erto sober-minded parishes in which the 
sect, if it might be dignified with even 
such a name, had sprung up. 

The marquis listened with much in- 
difference and some impatience : what 
did he or any other gentleman care about 
such things ? Besides, he had a friendly 
feeling toward the fisher-folk, and a de- 
cided disinclination to meddle with their 
liberty either of action or utterance. 

“But what have I to do with it, Mr. 
Cairns ?’’ he said when the stream of the 
parson’s utterance had at length ceased 
to flow. “ I am not a theologian ; and 
if I were, I do not see how that even 
would give me a right to interfere with 
these people.” 

“In such times of insubordination as 
these, my lord,” said Mr. Cairns, “when 
every cadger thinks himself as good as 
an earl, it is more than desirable that not 
a single foothold should be lost. There 
must be a general election soon, my lord. 
Besides, these men abuse your lordship’s 
late hospitality, declaring it has had the 
worst possible influence on the morals 
of the people.” 

A shadow of truth rendered this as- 


183 

sertion the worse misrepresentation : no 
blame to the marquis had even been 
hinted at — the speakers had only ani- 
madverted on the fishermen who had 
got drunk on the occasion. 

“Still,” said the marquis smiling, for 
the reported libel did not wound him 
very deeply, “what ground of right have 
I to interfere ?” 

“The shore is your property, my lord 
— every rock and every buckie [spiral 
shell) upon it; the caves are your own 
— every stone and pebble of them : you 
can prohibit all such assemblies.” 

“And what good would that do ? They 
would only curse me and go somewhere 
else.” 

“Where could they go where the same 
law wouldn’t hold against them, my lord ? 
The coast is yours for miles and miles on 
both sides.” 

“I don’t know that it should be.” 

“ Why not, my lord ? It has belonged 
to your family from time immemorial, 
and will belong to it, I trust, while the 
moon endureth.” 

“They used to say,” said the marquis 
thoughtfully, as if he were recalling 
something he had heard long ago, “that 
the earth was the Lord’s.” 

“This part of it is Lord Lossie’s,” said 
Mr. Cairns, combining the jocular with 
the complimentary in one irreverence ; 
but as if to atone for the freedom he had 
taken, “ The Deity has committed it to 
the great ones of the earth to rule for 
him,” he added, with a devout obeisance 
to the delegate. 

Lord Lossie laughed inwardly. 

“You can even turn them out of their 
houses if you please, my lord,” he super- 
added. 

“God forbid !” said the marquis. 

“A threat, the merest hint, of such a 
measure is all that would be necessary.” 

“But are you certain of the truth of 
these accusations ?” 

“ My lord !” 

“Of course you believe them, or you 
would not repeat them, but it does not 
follow that they are fact.” 

“They are matter of common report, 
my lord. What I have stated is in every 
one’s mouth.” 


MALCOLM. 


% 


184 

“ But you have not yourself heard any 
of their sermons, or what do they call 
them ?” 

“ No, my lord,” said Mr. Cairns, hold- 
ing up his white hands in repudiation of 
the idea : “it would scarcely accord with 
my position to act the spy.” 

“So to keep yourself immaculate you 
take all against them for granted? I 
have no such scruples, however. I will 
go and see, or rather hear, what they 
are about : after that I shall be in a po- 
sition to judge.” 

“ Y our lordship’s presence will put them 
on their guard.” 

“If the mere sight of me is a check,” 
returned the marquis, “extreme measures 
will hardly be necessary.” 

He spoke definitively, and made a 
slight movement which his visitor ac- 
cepted as his dismissal. He laughed 
aloud when the door closed, for the spirit 
of what the Germans call Schadenfr'eude 
was never far from his elbow, and he re- 
joiced in the parson’s discomfiture. It 
was in virtue of his simplicity, precluding 
discomfiture, that Malcolm could hold 
his own with him so well. For him he 
now sent. 

“Well, MacPhail,” he said kindly as 
the youth entered, “how is that foot of 
yours getting on ?” 

“Brawly, my lord: there’s naething 
muckle the maitter wi’ hit or me aither, 
noo ’at we’re up. But I was jist near- 
han’ deid o’ ower-muckle bed.” 

“ Hadn’t you better come down out of 
that cockloft ?” said the marquis, drop- 
ping his eyes. 

“ Na, my lord : I dinna care aboot 
partin’ wi’ my neebor yet.” 

“What neighbor?” 

“Ow, the auld warlock, or whatever it 
may be ’at bauds a reemish [rummage) 
there.” 

“What! is he troublesome next?” 

“Ow, na I I’m no thinkin’ ’t ; but ’deed 
I dinna ken, my lord,” said Malcolm! 

“What do you mean, then ?” 

“Gien yer lordship wad alloo me to 
force yon door, I wad be better able to 
tell ye.” 

“Then the old man is not quiet?” 

“There’s something no quaiet.” 


“ Nonsense I It’s all your imagination, 
depend on it.” 

“ I dinna think it.” 

“What do you think, then? You’re 
not afraid of ghosts, surely ?” 

“No muckle. I hae naething mair 
upo’ my conscience nor I can bide i’ the 
deidest o’ the nicht.” 

“ Then you think ghosts come of a bad 
conscience — a kind of moral delirium 
tremens, eh ?” 

“ I dinna ken, my lord ; but that’s the 
only kin’ o’ ghaist I wad be fleyed at — 
at least, ’at I wad rin frae. I wad a 
heap raither hae a ghaist i’ my hoose 
nor ane far’er benn. An ill man, or a 
wuman like Mistress Catanach, for en- 
stance, ’at ’s a’ boady, ’cep’ what o’ her 
’s deevil — ” 

“Nonsense!” said the marquis angri- 
ly, but Malcolm went on : 

“ — maun be jist fu’ o’ ghaists ! An’, 
for onything I ken, that’ll be what maks 
ghaists o’ themsel’s efter they’re deid, 
settin’ them walkm', as they ca’ ’t. It’s 
full waur nor bein’ possessed wi’ deevils, 
an’ maun be a hantle mair ooncoamfort- 
able. But I wad hae yon door opent, 
my lord.” 

“ Nonsense !” exclaimed the marquis 
once more, and shrugged his shoulders. 
“You must leave that room. If I hear 
anything more about noises or that sort 
of rubbish, I shall insist upon it. I sent 
for you now, however, to ask you about 
these clandestine meetings of the fisher- 
folk.” 

“Clandestine, my lord? There’s no 
clam aboot them but the clams upo’ the 
rocks.” 

The marquis was not etymologist 
enough to understand Malcolm’s poor 
pun, and doubtless thought it worse than 
it was. “I don’t want any fooling,” he 
said. “Of course you know these peo- 
ple ?” 

“ Ilka man, wuman an’ bairn o’ them,” 
answered Malcolm. 

“And what sort are they ?” 

“Siclike as ye micht expec’.” 

“ That’s not a very luminous answer.” 

“Weel, they’re nae waur nor ither 
fowk, to begin wi ; an’ gien this bauds 
they’ll be better nor mony.” 


MALCOLM. 


“What sort are their leaders ?“ 

“Guid, respectable fowk, my lord.” 

“Then there’s not much harm in 
them f" 

“There’s nane but what they wad fain 
be rid o’. 1 canna say as muckle for a’ 

’at hings on to them. There’s o’ them, 
nae doobt, wha wad fain win to h’aven 
ohn left their sins ahin’ them, but they 
get nae encouragement fra Maister Mac- 
Leod. Blue Peter, ’at gangs oot wi’ ’s i’ 
■yer lordship’s boat — he’s ane o’ their 
best men, though he never gangs ayont 
prayin’. I’m tauld.” 

“Which is far enough, sureh',” said 
his lordship, who, belonging to the Epis- 
copal Church, had a different idea con- 
cerning the relative dignities of preach- 
ing and praying. 

“Ay, for a body’s sel’, surely; but 
maybe no aye eneuCh for ither fowk,” 
answered Malcolm, always ready after 
his clumsy fashion. 

“ Have you been to any of these meet- 
ings ?” / 

“ I was at the first twa, my lord.” 

“Why not more ?” 

“ I didna care muckle aboot them, an’ 
I hae aye plenty to du. Besides, I can 
get mair oot o’ Maister Graham wi’ twa 
words o’ a queston nor the haill crew 
o’ them could tell me atween this an’ 
eternity.” 

“Well, I am going to trust you,” said 
the marquis slowly, with an air of ques- 
tion rather than of statement. 

“Ye may du that, my lord.” 

“You mean I may with safety.^” 

“ I div mean that same, my lord.” 

“You can hold your tongue, then ?” 

“I can, an’ will, my lord,” said Mal- 
colm ; but added in haste, “ ’cep’ it in- 
terfere wi’ ony forgane agreement or 
nat’ral obligation.” * 

It must be borne in mind that Malcolm 
was in the habit of discussing all sorts 
of questions with Mr. Graham : some of 
the formulae wrought out between them 
he had made himself thoroughly master 
of. 

“By Jupiter!” exclaimed the marquis 
with a pause of amusement. “Well,” 
he went on, “ I suppose I must take you 
on your own terms. They’ve been ask- 


185 

ing me to put a stop to these conven- 
ticles.” 

“Wha has, my lord ?” 

“ That’s my business.” 

“ Lat it be nae ither body’s, my lord.” 

“That’s my intention. I told him I 
would go and judge for myself.” 

“ Jist like yer lordship !” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“I was aye sure ye was for fair play, 
my lord.” 

“ It’s little enough I’ve ever had,” said 
the marquis. 

“Sae lang’s we gie plenty, my lord, it 
maitters less hoo muckle we get. A’body 
likes to get it.” 

“That doctrine won’t carry you far, 
my lad.” 

“Far eneuch, gien ’t cairry me throu’, 
my lord.” 

“ How absolute the knave is I” said his 
lordship good-humoredly. “Well, but,” 
he resumed, “ about these fishermen : I’m 
only afraid Mr. Cairns was right.” 

“What said he, my lord ?” 

“ That when they saw me there they 
would fit their words to my ears.” 

“ I ken them better nor ony black-coat 
atween Cromarty an’ Peterheid, an’ I can 
tell yer lordship there winna be ae word 
o’ differ for your bein’ there.” 

“ If only I could be there and not there 
both at once ! There’s no other sure 
mode of testing your assertion. What 
a pity the only thorough way should be 
an impossible one I” 

“To a’ practical purposes it’s easy 
eneuch, my lord. Jist gang ohn be seen 
the first nicht, an’ the neist gang in a 
co’ch an’ fower. Syne compaur.” 

“Quite satisfactory, no doubt, if I 
could bring myself to do it ; but, though 
I said I would, I don’t like to interfere 
so far even as to go at all.” 

“At ony public meetin’, my lord, ye 
hae as guid a richt to be present as the 
puirest body i’ the Ian’. An’ forbye that, 
as lord o’ the place ye hae a richt to ken 
what’s gaein’ on. I dinna ken hoo far 
the richt o’ interferin’ gangs : that’s an- 
ither thing a’thegither.” 

“ I see you’re a thorough-going rebel 
yourself.” 

“Naething o’ the kin’, my lord. I’m 


i86 


MALCOLM. 


only sae far o’ yer lordship’s min’ ’at I 
like fair play — gien a body could only be 
aye richt sure what was fair play !” 

“ Yes, there’s the very point : certainly, 
at least, when the question comes to be 
eavesdropping — not to mention that I 
could never condescend to play the spy.” 

‘‘What a body has a richt to hear he may 
hear as he likes, either shawin’ himsel’ 
or hidin’ himsel’. An’ it’s the 07 ily plan 
’at ’s fair to them, my lord. It’s no ’s 
gien yer lordship was lyin’ in wait to du 
them a mischeef : ye want raither to du 
them a kin’ness an’ tak their pairt.” 

‘‘ I don’t know that, Malcolm. It de- 
pends.” 

‘‘ It’s plain yer lordship’s prejudeezed 
i’ their fawvor. Ony gait. I’m sartin it’s 
fair play ye want ; an’ I canna for the 
life o’ me see a hair o’ wrang i’ yer lord- 
ship’s gaein’ in a cogue, as auld Tammy 
Dyster ca’s -t ; for at the warst ye cud 
only interdic them, an’ that ye cud du a’ 
the same whether ye gaed or no. An’ 
gien ye be sae wulled I can tak you an’ 
my leddy whaur ye’ll hear ilka word ’at 
’s uttered, an’ no a body get a glimp o’ 
ye, mair nor gien ye was sittin’ at yer 
ain fireside as ye are the noo.” 

‘‘That does make a difference,” said 
the marquis, a great part of whose un- 
willingness arose from the dread of dis- 
covery. ‘‘ It would be very amusing.” 

‘‘ I’ll no promise ye that,” returned 
Malcolm : ‘‘ I dinna ken aboot that. 
There’s jist ae objection, hooever: ye 
wad hae to gang a guid hoor afore they 
begoud to gaither. An’ there’s aye laad- 
dies aboot the place sin’ they turned it in- 
till a kirk,” he added thoughtfully. ‘‘ But,” 
he resumed, ‘‘we cud manage them.” 

‘‘ How ?” 

‘‘ I wad get my gran’father to strik’ 
up wi’ a spring upo’ the pipes ^o’ the ither 
side o’ the bored craig, or lat aff a shot 
o’ the sweevil : they wad a’ rin to see, 
an’ i’ the mean time we cud Ian’ ye frae 
the cutter. We wad hae ye in an’ oot o’ 
sicht in a moment — Blue Peter an’ me — 
as quaiet as gien ye war ghaists an’ the 
hoor midnicht.” 

The marquis was persuaded, but ob- 
jected to the cutter. They would walk 
there, he said. So it was arranged that 


Malcolm should take him and Lady 
Florimel to the Baillies’ Barn the very 
next time the fishermen had a meeting. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

THE baillies’ BARN. 

Lady Florimel was delighted at the 
prospect of such an adventure. The 
evening arrived. An hour before the 
time appointed for the meeting the three 
issued from the tunnel and passed along 
the landward side of the dune toward 
the promontory. There sat the piper on 
the swivel, ready to sound a pibroch the 
moment they should have reached the 
shelter of the bored craig, his signal be- 
ing Malcolm’s whistle. The plan an- 
swered perfectly. In a few minutes all 
the children within hearing were gather- 
ed about Duncan — a rarer right to them 
than heretofore — and the way was clear 
to enter unseen. 

It was already dusk, and the cave was 
quite dark, but Malcolm lighted a can- 
dle, and with a liitle difficulty got them 
up into the wider part of the cleft, where 
he had arranged comfortable seats with 
plaids and cushions. As soon as they 
were placed he extinguished the light. 

‘‘ I wish you would tell us another sto- 
ry, Malcolm,” said Lady Florimel. ' 

‘‘ Do,” said the marquis : ‘‘the place is 
not consecrated yet.” 

‘‘ Did ye ever hear the tale o’ the auld 
warlock, my leddy ?” asked Malcolm. 
‘‘ Only my lord kens ’t,” he added. 

‘‘/don’t,” said Lady Florimel. 

‘‘It’s great nonsense,” said the mar- 
quis. 

‘‘ Do let us have it, papa.” 

‘‘Very well. I don’t mind hearing it 
again.” * 

He wanted to see how Malcolm would 
embellish it. 

‘‘It seems to me,” said Malcolm, ‘‘that 
this ane aboot Lossie Hoose, an’ yon 
ane aboot Colonsay Castel, are verra 
likly but twa stalks frae the same rute. 
Ony gait, this ane aboot the warlock 
maun be the auldest o’ the twa. Ye s’ 
hae ’t sic ’s I hae ’t mysel’. Mistress 
Coorthoup taul’ ’t to me.” 


MALCOLM, 


187 


It was after his own more picturesque 
fashion, however, that he recounted the 
tale of Lord Gernon. 

As the last words left his lips Lady 
Florimel gave a startled cry, seized him 
by the arm and crept close to him. The 
marquis jumped to his feet, knocked his 
head against the rock, uttered an oath 
and sat down again. 

“What ails ye, my leddy ?” said Mal- 
colm. “There’s naething here to hurt 

ye-” 

“I saw a face,’’ she said — ^“a white 
face !’’ 

“Whaur ?’’ 

“Beyond you a little way — near the 
ground,’’ she answered in a tremulous 
whisper. 

“It’s as dark ’s pick,’’ said Malcolm, 
as if thinking it to himself. He knew 
well enough that it must be the laird or 
Phemy, but he was anxious the marquis 
should not learn the secret of the laird’s 
refuge. 

“ I saw a face anyhow,’’ said Florimel. 
“ It gleamed white for one moment, and 
then vanished.’’ 

“ I wonner ye dinna cry oot waur, my 
leddy,’’ said Malcolm, peering into the 
darkness. 

“ I was too frightened. It looked so 
ghastly — not more than a foot from the 
ground.’’ 

“Cud it hae been a flash, like, frae yer 
ain een ?’’ # 

“No : I am sure it was a face.’’ 

“ How much is there of this cursed 
hole ?’’ asked the marquis, rubbing the 
top of his head. 

“A heap,’’ answered Malcolm. “The 
grun’ gangs doon like a brae ahin’ ’s in- 
till a—’’ . 

“You don’t mean right behind us?’’ 
cried the marquis. 

“Nae jist doss, my lord. We’re sit- 
tin’ i’ the mou’ o’ ’t like, wi’ the thrap- 
ple {throat) o’ ’t ahin’ ’s, an’ a muckle 
stamach ayont that.’’ 

“ I hope there’s no danger,’’ said the 
marquis. 

“ Nane ’at I k6n 0 ’.’’ 

“No water at the bottom ?’’ 

“ Nane, my lord — that is, naething but 
a bonny spring i’ the rock-side.’’ 


“Come away, papa?’’ cried Florimel. 
“ I don’t like it. I’ve had enough of this 
kind of thing.’’ 

“ Nonsense !’ said the marquis, still 
rubbing his head. 

“Ye wad spile a’, my leddy ! It’s ower 
late, forbye,’’ said Malcolm : “ I heai a 
fut.’’ 

He rose and peeped out, but drew back 
instantly, saying in a whisper, “ It’s Mis- 
tress Catanach wi’ a lantren. Haud yer 
tongue, my bonny leddy : ye ken weel 
she’s no mowse. Dinna try to leuk, my 
lord : she micht get a glimp o’ ye — she’s 
terrible gleg. I hae been bearin’ mair 
yet aboot her. Yer lordship ’s ill to con- 
vence, but depen’ upo’ ’t whaurever that 
wuman is, there there’s mischeef. Whaur 
she takes a scunner at a body she hates 
like the verra deevil. She winna aye lat 
them ken ’t, but taks time to du her ill 
turns. An’ it’s no that only, but gien 
she gets a haud o’ onything agane ony- 
body, she ’ll save ’t up upo’ the chance 
o’ their giein’ her some offence afore they 
dee. She never lowses haud o’ the tail 
o’ a thing, an’ at her ain proaper time 
she’s in her natur’ bun’ to mak the warst 
use o’ ’t.’’ 

Malcolm was anxious both to keep 
them still and to turn aside any further 
inquiry as to the face Florimel had seen. 
Again he peeped out. “What is she 
efter noo ? She’s cornin’ this gait,’’ he 
went on in a succession of whispers, 
turning his head back over his shoulder 
when he spoke. “Gien she thoucht 
there was a hole i’ the perris she didna 
ken a’ the oots an’ ins o’, it wad haud 
her ohn sleepit. Weesht ! weesht ! here 
she comes,’’ he concluded after a listen- 
ing pause, in the silence of which he 
could hear her step approaching. 

He stretched out his neck over the 
ledge, and saw her coming straight for 
the back of the cave, looking right be- 
fore her with slow-moving, keen, wicked 
eyes. It was impossible to say what 
made them look wicked: neither in 
form, color, motion nor light were they 
ugly, yet in every one of these they look- 
ed wicked, as her lantern, which being 
of horn she had opened for more light, 
now and then, as it swung in her hand, 


i88 


MALCOLM. 


shone up on her pale, pulpy, evil coun- 
tenance. 

“Gien she tries to come up. I’ll hae to 
caw her doon,” he said to himself ; ‘‘an’ 
I dinna like it, for she’s a wuman cfter 
a’, though a deevilich kin’ o’ a ane; but 
there’s my leddy : I hae broucht her in- 
till 't, an’ I maun see her safe oot o’ ’t.” 

But if Mrs. Catanach was bent on an 
exploration, she was for the time prevent- 
ed from prosecuting it by the approach 
of the first of the worshipers, whose 
voices they now plainly heard. She re- 
treated toward the middle of the cave 
and sat down in a dark corner, closing 
her lantern and hiding it with the skirt 
of her long cloak. Presently a good 
many entered at once, some carrying 
lanterns, but most of them tallow can- 
dles, which they quickly lighted and dis- 
posed about the walls. The rest of the 
congregation, with its leaders, came troop- 
ing in so fast that in ten minutes or so 
the service began. 

As soon as the singing commenced, 
Malcolm whispered to Lady Florimel, 
“Was ’t a man’s face or a lassie’s ye 
saw, my leddy ?’’ 

“A man’s face — the same we saw in 
the storm,’’ she answered, and Malcolm 
felt her shudder as she spoke. 

“ It’s naething but the mad laird,’’ he 
said. “ He’s better nor hairmless. Din- 
na say a word to yer father, my leddy. 
I dinna like to say that, but I’ll tell ye a’ 
what for efterhin’.’’ 

But Florimel, knowing that her father 
had a horror of lunatics, was willing 
enough to be silent. 

No sooner was her terror thus as- 
suaged than the oddities of the singing 
laid hold upon her, stirring up a most 
tyrannous impulse to laughter. The 
prayer that followed made it worse. In 
itself the prayer was perfectly reverent, 
and yet, for dread of irreverence, I must 
not attempt a representation of the forms 
of its embodiment or the manner of its 
utterance. 

So uncontrollable did her inclination 
to merriment become that she found at 
last the only way to keep from bursting 
into loud laughter was to slacken the 
, curb and go off at a canter : I mean, to 


laugh freely but gently. This so infect- 
ed her father that he straightway accom- 
panied her, but with more noise. Mal- 
colm sat in misery — from the fear not so 
much of discovery, though that would 
be awkward enough, as of the loss to 
the laird of his best refuge. But when 
he reflected, he doubted much whether 
it was even now a safe one, and anyhow 
knew it would be as vain to remonstrate 
as to try to stop the noise of a brook by 
casting pebbles into it. 

When it came to the sermon, however, 
things went better, for MacLeod was the 
preacher — an eloquent man, after his 
kind, in virtue of the genuine earnest- 
ness of which he was full. If his anx- 
iety for others appeared to be rather to 
save them from the consequences of their 
sins, his main desire for himself certain- 
ly was to be delivered from evil : the 
growth of his spiritual nature, while it 
rendered him more and more dissatisfied 
with himself, had long, left behind all 
fear save of doing wrong. His sermon 
this evening was founded on the text, 
“The natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God.’’ He spoke 
fervently and persuasively ; nor, although 
his tone and accent were odd, and his 
Celtic modes and phrases to those Saxon 
ears outlandish, did these peculiarities in 
the least injure the influence of the man. 
Even from Florimel was the demon of 
laughter driven ; and the marquis, al- 
though not a single notion of what the 
man intended passed through the doors 
of his understanding, sat quiet and dis- 
approved of nothing. Possibly, had he 
been alone as he listened, he too, like 
one of old, might have heard in the dark 
cave the still small voice of a presence 
urging him forth to the light ; but as it 
was, the whole utterance passed without 
a single word or phrase or sentence hav- 
ing roused a thought or suggested a doubt 
or moved a question or hinted an objec- 
tion or a need of explanation. That the 
people present should interest themselves 
in such things only set before him the 
folly of mankind. The text and the 
preacher both kept telling him that such 
as he could by no possibility have the 
slightest notion what such things were ; 


MALCOLM. 


but not the less did he, as if he knew all 
about them, wonder how the deluded 
fisher-folk could sit and listen. The 
more tired he grew, the more angry he 
got with the parson who had sent him 
there with his foolery, and the more con- 
vinced that the men who prayed and 
preached were as honest as they were 
silly, and that the thing to die of itself 
had only to be let alone. He heard the 
Amen of the benediction with a sigh of 
relief, and rose at once — cautiously this 
time. 

“Ye maunna gang yet, my lord,” said 
Malcolm. “They maun be a’ oot first.” 

“ I don’t care who sees me,” protested 
the weary man. 

“But yer lordship wadna like to be 
descriet scram’lin’ doon efter the back 
like the bear in Robinson Crusoe?" 

The marquis grumbled, and yielded 
impatiently. 

At length Malcolm, concluding from 
the silence that the meeting had thor- 
oughly skaiied, peeped cautiously out to 
make sure. But after a moment he drew 
back, saying in a regretful whisper, “ I’m 
sorry ye canna gang yet, my lord. There’s 
some half a dizzen o’ ill-luikin’ chields 
— cairds {gypsies), I’m thinkin’, or may- 
be waur — congregat doon there, an’ it’s 
my opingon they’re efter nae guid, my 
lord.” 

“ How do you know that ?” 

“Onybody wad ken that ’at got a 
glimp o’ them.” 

“ Let me look.” 

“Na, my lord: ye dinna understan’ 
the lie o’ the stanes eneuch to hand oot 
o’ sicht.” 

“ How long do you mean to keep us 
here ?” asked the marquis impatiently. 

“Till it’s safe to gang, my lord. For 
onything I ken, they may be efter cornin’ 
up here. They may be used to the place, 
though I dinna think it.” 

“In that case we must go down at 
once. We must not let them find us 
here.” 

“ They wad tak ’s ane by ane as we 
gaed doon, my lord, an’ we wadna hae 
a chance. Think o’ my leddy there.” 

Florimel heard all, but with the courage 
of her race. 


189 

“This is a fine position you have 
brought us into, MacPhail !” said his 
master, now thoroughly uneasy for his 
daughter’s sake. 

“Nae waur nor -I’ll tak ye oot o’, gien 
ye lippen to me, my lord, an’ no speyk 
a word.” 

“If you tell them who papa is,” said 
Florimel, “they won’t do us any harm, 
surely.” 

“I’m nane sae sure o’ that. They 
micht want to rype ’s pooches {search 
his pockets), an’ my lord wad ill stan’ 
that. I’m thinkin’. Na, na. Jist stan’ 
ye back, my lord an’ my leddy, an’ 
dinna speyk a word. I s’ sattle them. 
They’re sic villains there’s nae terms to 
be hauden wi’ them.” 

His lordship was far from satisfied, but 
a light shining up into the crevice at the 
moment gave powerful support to Mal- 
colm’s authority : he took Florimel’s 
hand and drew her a little farther from 
the mouth of the cave. 

“ Don’t you wish we had Demon with 
us ?” whispered the girl. 

“I was thinking how I never went 
without a dagger in Venice,” said the 
marquis, “and never once had occasion 
to use it. Now I haven’t even a pen- 
knife about me. It looks very awk- 
ward.” 

“Please don’t talk like that,” said 
Florimel. “Can’t you trust Malcolm, 
papa ?” 

"Oh yes, perfectly,” he answered, but 
the tone was hardly up to the words. 

They could see the dim figure of Mal- 
colm, outlined in fits of the approach- 
ing light, all but filling the narrow en- 
trance as he bent forward to listen. 
Presently he laid himself down, leaning 
on his left elbow, with his right shoulder 
only a little above the level of the pas- 
sage. The light came nearer, and they 
heard the sound of scrambling on the 
rock, but no voice : then for one mo- 
ment the light shone clear upon the roof 
of the cleft; the next came the sound 
of a dull blow, the light vanished, and 
the noise of a heavy fall came from be- 
neath. 

“Ane o’ them, my lord,” said Malcolm 
in a sharp whisper over his shoulder. 


190 


MALCOLM. 


A confusion of voices arose. “You 
booby!” said one. “You climb like a 
calf. I’ll go next.” 

Evidently they thought he had slipped 
and fallen, and he was unable to set 
them right. Malcom heard them drag 
him out of the way. 

The second ascended more rapidly, 
and met his fate the sooner. As he de- 
livered the blow, Malcolm recognized 
one of the laird’s assailants, and was 
now perfectly at his ease. “Twa o’ 
them, my lord,” he said. “Gien we had 
ane mair doon, we cud manage the 
lave.” 

The second, however, had not lost his 
speech, and amidst the confused talk 
that followed Malcolm heard the words, 
“ Rin doon to the coble for the gun,” and 
immediately after the sound of feet hur- 
rying from the cave. 

He rose quietly, leaped into the midst 
of them, came down upon one and 
struck out right and left. Two ran and 
three lay where they were. “ Gien ane 
o’ ye muv han’ or fit. I’ll brain him wi’ 
’s ain stick,” he cried as he wrenched a 
cudgel from the grasp of one of them. 
Then catching up a lantern and hurry- 
ing behind the projecting rock, “Haste 
ye, an’ come,” he shouted. “The w’y 
’s clear, but only for a meenute.” 

Florimel appeared, and Malcolm got 
her down. 

“ Mind that fellow,” cried the marquis 
from above. 

Malcolm turned quickly, and saw the 
gleam of a knife in the grasp of his old 
enemy, who had risen and crept behind 
him to the recess. He flung the lantern 
in his face, following it with a blow in 
which were concentrated all the weight 
and energy of his frame. The man 
went down again heavily, and Malcolm 
instantly trampled all their lanterns to 
pieces. 

“Noo,” he said to himself, “they win- 
na ken but it’s the laird an’ Phemy wi’ 
me.” 

Then turning, and taking Florimel by 
the arm, he hurried her out of the cave, 
followed by the marquis. 

They emerged in the liquid darkness 
of a starry night. Lady Florimel clung 


to both her father and Malcolm. It was 
a rough way for some little distance, but 
at length they reached the hard wet 
sand, and the marquis would have stop- 
ped to take breath, but Malcolm was un- 
easy and hurried them on. 

“What are you frightened at now?’* 
asked his lordship. 

“Naething,” answered Malcolm, add- 
ing to himself, however, “I’m fleyt ai 
naething — I’m fleyt for the laird.” 

As they approached the tunnel he fell 
behind. 

“Why don’t you come on?” said his 
lordship. 

“I’m ^aen’ back noo ’at ye’re safe,” 
said Malcolm. 

“ Going back ! What for ?” asked the 
marquis. 

“ I maun see what thae villains are up 
till,” answered Malcolm. 

“Not alone, surely!” exclaimed the 
marquis. “At least get some of youi 
people to go with you.” 

“There’s nae time, my lord. Dinna 
be fleyt for me : I s’ tak care o’ mysel’.” 

He was already yards away, running 
at full speed. The marquis shouted 
after him, but Malcolm would not hear. 

When he reached the Baillies’ Barn 
once more all was still. He groped his 
way in, and found his own lantern where 
they had been sitting, and, having light- 
ed it, descended and followed the wind- 
ings of the cavern a long way, but saw 
nothing of the laird or Phemy. Coming 
at length to a spot where he heard the 
rushing of a stream, he found he could 
go no farther : the roof of the cave had 
fallen, and blocked up the way with 
huge masses of stone and earth. He 
had come a good distance, certainly, but 
by no means so far as Phemy’s imagina- 
tion had represented the reach of the 
cavern. He might, however, have miss- 
ed a turn, he thought. 

The sound he heard was that of the 
Lossie Burn flowing along in the star- 
light through the grounds of the House. 
Of this he satisfied himself afterward; 
and then it seemed to him not unlikely 
that in ancient times the river had found 
its way to the sea along the cave, for 
throughout its length the action of water 


MALCOLM. 


was plainly visible. But perhaps the 
sea itself had used to go roaring along 
the great duct : Malcolm was no geolo- 
gist, and could not tell. . . 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

MRS. STEWART’S CLAIM. 

The weather became unsettled with 
the approach of winter, and the marquis 
had a boat-house built at the west end 
of the Seaton : there the little cutter was 
laid up, well wrapped in tarpaulins, like 
a butterfly returned to the golden coffin 
of her internatal chrysalis. A great part 
of his resulting leisure Malcolm spent 
with Mr. Graham, to whom he had, as a 
matter of course, unfolded the trouble 
caused him by Duncan’s communication. 

The more thoughtful a man is, and 
the more conscious of what is going on 
within himself, the more interest will he 
take in what he can know of his pro- 
genitors to the remotest generations, and 
a regard to ancestral honors, however 
contemptible the forms which the appro- 
priation of them often assumes, is a plant 
rooted in the deepest soil of humanity. 
The high-souled laborer will yield to 
none in his respect for the dignity of his 
origin, and Malcolm had been as proud 
of the humble descent he supposed his 
own as Lord Lossie was of his mighty 
ancestry. Malcolm had indeed a loftier 
sense of resulting dignity than his master. 

He reverenced Duncan both for his 
uprightness and for a certain grandeur 
of spirit, which, however ridiculous to 
the common eye, would have been glo- 
rious in the eyes of the chivalry of old : 
he looked up to him with admiration be- 
cause of his gifts in poetry and music, 
and loved him endlessly for his unfail- 
ing goodness and tenderness to himself. 
Even the hatred of the grand old man 
had an element of unselfishness in its 
retroaction, of power in its persistency, 
and of greatness in its absolute contempt 
of compromise. At the same time he 
was the only human being to whom Mal- 
colm’s heart had gone forth as to his 
own ; and now, with the knowledge of 
yet deeper cause for loving him, he had 


191 

to part with the sense of a filial relation 
to him. And this involved more ; for so 
thoroughly had the old man come to re- 
gard the boy as his offspring that he had 
nourished in him his own pride of family; 
and it added a sting of mortification to 
Malcolm’s sorrow that the greatness of 
the legendary descent in which he had 
believed, and the honorableness of the 
mournful history with which his thoughts 
of himself had been so closely asso- 
ciated, were swept from him utterly. 
Nor was this all even yet : in losing these 
he had had, as it were, to let go his hold, 
not of his clan merely, but of his race : 
every link of kin that bound him to hu- 
manity had melted away from his grasp. 
Suddenly he would become aware that 
his heart was sinking within him, and 
questioning it why, would learn anew 
that he was alone in the world — a being 
without parents, without sister or brother, 
with none to whom he might look in the 
lovely confidence of a right bequeathed 
by some common mother, near or afar. 
He had waked into being, but all around 
him was dark, for there was no window 
— that is, no kindred eye — by which the 
light of the world whence he had come, 
entering, might console him. 

But a gulf of blackness was about to 
open at his feet, against which the dark- 
ness he now lamented would show pur- 
ple and gray. 

One afternoon as he passed through 
the Seaton from the harbor to have a 
look at the cutter, he heard the Partaness 
calling after him. “Weel, ye’re a sicht 
for sair een, noo ’at ye’re like to turn 
oot something worth luikin’ at,” she 
cried as he approached with his usual 
friendly smile. 

“What div ye mean by that. Mistress 
Findlay?” asked Malcolm, carelessly 
adding, “Is yer man in ?” 

“Ay,” she went on, without heeding 
either question, “ye’ll be gran’ set up 
noo ! Ye’ll no be haen’ ‘ a fine day ’ to 
fling at yer auld freen’s, the puir fisher- 
fowk, er lang. W^eel, it’s the w’y o’ the 
warl ! Hech, sirs !” 

“What on earth ’s set ye aff like that. 
Mistress Findlay ?” said Malcolm. “ It’s 
nae sic a feerious {^furious) gran’ thing 


192 


MALCOLM. 


to be my lord’s skipper — or henchman, 
as my daddy wad hae ’t — surely ! It’s a 
heap gran’er like to be a free fisherman, 
wi’ a boat o’ yer ain, like the Partan.” 

" Hoots ! Nane o’ yer clavers ! Ye 
ken weel eneuch what I piean— as weel 
’s ilka ither creatit sowl i’ Portlossie. An’ 
gien ye dinna chowse to lat on aboot it 
till an auld freen’ ’cause she’s naething 
but a fisherwife, it’s dune ye mair skaith 
a’ready nor I thoucht it wad to the lang 
last, Ma’colm — for it’s yer ain name I s’ 
ca’ ye yet, gien ye war ten times a laird. 
Didna I gie ye the breist whan ye cud 
du naething i’ the wardle but sowk ? An’ 
weel ye sowkit, puir innocent ’at ye was !" 

“As sure’s we’re baith alive,’’ assever- 
ated Malcolm, “I ken nae mair nor a 
sawtit herrin’ what ye’re drivin’ at.’’ 

“Tell me ’at ye dinna ken what a’ the 
queentry kens, an’ hit aboot yer ain- 
sel’ !’’ screamed the Partaness. 

“I tell ye I ken naething; an’ gien ye 
dinna tell me what ye’re efter direckly, 
I s’ baud awa’ to Mistress Ailison : she ’ll 
tell me.’’ 

This was a threat sufficiently prevail- 
ing. 

“ It’s no in natur’ !’’ she cried. “ Here’s 
Mistress Stewart o’ the Gersefell been 
cawin’ [driving) like mad aboot the 
place, in her cairriage an’ hoo mony 
horse I dinna ken, declarin’ — ay, sweir- 
in’, they tell me — ’at ane cowmonly ca’d 
Ma’colm MacPhail is neither mair nor 
less nor the son born o’ her ain boady 
in honest wadlock. An’ tell me ye ken 
naething aboot it ! What are ye stan’in’ 
like that for, as gray-mou’d ’s a deein’ 
skate ?’’ 

For the first time in his life Malcolm, 
young and strong as he was, felt sick. 
Sea and sky grew dim before him, and 
the earth seemed to reel under him. 

“I dinna believe ’t,’’ he faltered, and 
turned away. 

“Ye dinna believe what I tell ye?’’ 
screeched the wrathful Partaness. “Ye 
daur say the word !’’ 

But Malcolm did not care to reply. 
He wandered away, half unconscious of 
where he was, his head hanging and his 
eyes creeping over the ground. The 
words of the woman kept ringing in his 


ears, but ever and anon behind them, as 
it were in the depths of his soul, he 
heard the voice of the mad lord with its 
one lamentation, “I dinna ken whaur I 
cam’ frae.’’ Finding himself at length at 
Mr. Graham’s door, he wondered how 
he had got there. 

It was Saturday afternoon, and the 
master was in the churchyard. Startled 
by Malcolm’s look, he gazed at him in 
grave silent inquiry. 

“ Hae ye h’ard the ill news, sir ?’’ said 
the youth. 

“No : I’m sorry to hear there is any.” 

“ They tell me Mistress Stewart’s rin- 
nin’ aboot the toon claimin’ me !” 

“ Claiming you ! How do you mean ?” 

“ For her ain.” 

“Not for her son ?” 

“ Ay, sir : that ’s what they say. But 
ye haena h’ard o’,’t ?” 

“Not a word.” 

“ Then I believe it’s a’ havers,” cried 
Malcolm energetically. “ It was sair 
eneuch upo’ me a’ready to ken less o’ 
whaur I cam frae than the puir laird 
himseP, but to come frae whaur he cam 
frae was a thoucht ower sair.” 

“You don’t surely despise the poor 
fellow so much as to scorn to have the 
same parents with him ?” said Mr. Gra- 
ham. 

“The verra contra’, sir. But a wuman 
wha wad sae misguide the son o’ her ain 
body, an’ for naething but that as she 
had broucht him furth sic he was, — it ’s 
no to be lichtly believed nor lichtly 
endured. I s’ awa’ to Miss Horn an’ 
see whether she ’s h’ard ony sic leein’ 
clashes.” 

But as Malcolm uttered her name his 
heart sank within him, for their talk the 
night he had sought her hospitalitv for 
the laird came back to his memory, 
burning like an acrid poison. 

“You can’t do better,” said Mr. Gra- 
ham. “The report itself may be false — 
or true and the lady mistaken.” 

“She’ll hae to pruv ’t weel afore I say 
haud^' rejoined Malcolm. 

“And suppose she does?” 

“In that case,” said Malcolm with a 
composure almost ghastly, “a man maun 
tak what mither it pleases God to gie 


MALCOLM. 


193 


him. But faith ! she winna du wi’ me 
as vvi’ the puir laird. Gien she taks me 
up, she’ll repent ’at she didna lat me lie. 
She’ll be as little pleased wi’ the tane o’ 
her sons as the tither, I can tell her, ohn 
propheseed !” 

“ But think what you might do between 
mother and son,” suggested the master, 
willing to reconcile him to the possible 
worst. 

” It’s ower late for that,” he answered. 
” The puir man’s thairms {fiddle-strings) 
are a’ hingin’ lowse, an there’s no grip 
eneuch i’ the pegs to set them again. 
He wad but think I had gane ower to 
the enemy, an’ baud oot o’ my gait as 
eident {diligently) as he bauds oot o’ 
hers. Na, it wad du naething for him. 
Gien ’t warna for what I see in him, I 
wad hae a gran’ rebutter to her claim ; 
for hoo cud ony woman’s ain son hae 
sic a scunner at her as I hae i’ my hert 
an’ brain an’ verra stamach ? Gien she 
war my ain mither there bude to be 
some nait’ral drawin’s atween ’s, a body 
wad think. But it winna baud, for 
there’s the laird. The verra name o’ 
mither gars him steik his lugs an’ rin.” 

“Still, if she should be your mother, 
it’s for better for worse, as much as if 
she had been your own choice.” 

“ I kenna weel hoo it cud be for waur,” 
said Malcolm, who did not yet, even 
from his recollection of the things Miss 
Horn had said, comprehend what worst 
threatened him. 

“ It does seem strange,” said the mas- 
ter thoughtfully after a pause, " that some 
women should be allowed to be mothers 
— that through them sons and daughters 
of God should come into the world — 
thief-babies, say — human parasites, with 
no choice but to feed on the social body.” 

“I wonner what God thinks aboot it 
a’ ? It gars a body speir whether He 
cares or no,” said Malcolm gloomily. 

“It does,” responded Mr. Graham 
solemnly. 

“ T>\w ye alloo that, sir ?” returned Mal- 
colm aghast. “That soon’s as gien 
a’thing war rushin’ thegither back to the 
auld chaos.” 

“ I should not be surprised,” continued 
the master, apparently heedless of Mal- 

13 


colm’s consternation, “if the day should 
come when well-meaning men, excellent 
in the commonplace, but of dwarfed im- 
agination, refused to believe in a God on 
the ground of apparent injustice in the 
very frame and constitution of things. 
Such would argue that there might be 
either an omnipotent being who did not 
care, or a good being who could not help, 
but that there could not be a being both 
all-good and omnipotent, for such would 
never have suffered things to be as they 
are.” 

“ What wad the clergy say to hear ye, 
sir ?” said Malcolm, himself almost trem- 
bling at the words of his master. 

“ Nothing to the purpose, I fear. They 
would never face the question. I know 
what they would do if they could — burn 
me, as their spiritual ancestor Calvin 
would have done ; whose shoe-latchet 
they are yet not worthy to unloose. But 
mind, my boy, you’ve not heard me 
speak my thought on the matter at all.” 

“ But wadna ’t be better to believe in 
twa Gods nor nane ava’ ?” propounded 
Malcolm — “ane a’ guid, duin’ the best 
for ’s he cud, the ither a’ ill, but as poo- 
erfu’ as the guid ane — an’ for ever an’ 
aye a fecht atween them, whiles ane get- 
tin’ the warst o’ ’t, an’ whiles the ither ? 
It wad quaiet yer hert ony gait, an’ the 
battle o’ Armageddon wad gang on as 
gran’ ’s ever.” 

“ Two Gods there could not be,” said 
Mr. Graham. “Of the two beings sup- 
posed, the evil one must be called devil, 
were he ten times the more powerful.” 

“Wi’ a’ my hert,” responded Mal- 
colm. 

“But I agree with you,” the master 
went on, “ that Manicheism is unspeak- 
ably better than atheism, and unthink- 
ably better than believing in an unjust 
God. But I am not driven to such a 
theory.” 

“ Hae ye ane o’ yer ain ’at ’ll fit, sir ?” 

" If I knew of a theory in which was 
never an uncompleted arch or turret, ia 
whose circling wall was never a ragged 
breach, that theory I should know but 
to avoid-j such gaps are the eternal win- 
dows through which the dawn shall look 
in. A complete theory is a vault of 


194 


MALCOLM. 


stone around the theorist, whose very 
being yet depends on room to grow.” 

‘‘ Weel, I wad like to hear what ye hae 
agane Manicheism ?” 

“The main objection of theologians 
would be, I presume, that it did not pre- 
sent a God perfect in power as in good- 
ness, but I think it a far more objection- 
able point frhat it presents evil as possess- 
ing power in itself. My chief objection, 
however, would be a far deeper one — 
namely, that its good being cannot be 
absolutely good, for if he knew himself 
unable to ensure the well-being of his 
creatures, if he could not avoid exposing 
them to such foreign attack, had he a 
right to create them ? Would he have 
chosen such a doubtful existence for one 
whom he meant to love absolutely? 
Either, then, he did not love like a God, 
or he would not have created.” 

“ He micht ken himsel’ sure to win i’ 
the lang rin.” 

“Grant the same to the God of the 
Bible, and we come back to where we 
were before.” 

“Does that satisfee yersel’, Maister 
Graham ?” asked Malcolm, looking deep 
into the eyes of his teacher. 

“Not at all,” answered the master. 

“ Does onything ?” 

“Yes; but I will not say more on the 
subject now. The time may come when 
I shall have to speak that which I have 
.learned, but it is not yet. All I will say 
now is, that I am at peace concerning 
the question. Indeed, so utterly do I 
feel myself the offspring of the One that 
it would be enough for my peace now — 
I don’t say it would have been always — 
’to know my mind troubled on a matter : 
what troubled me would trouble God : 
■my trouble at the seeming wrong must 
have its being in the right existent in 
him. In him, supposing I could find 
none, I should yet say there 7nust lie a 
lucent, harmonious, eternal, not merely 
consoling, but absolutely satisfying solu- 
tion.” 

“ Winna ye tell me a’ ’at ’s in yer hert 
aboot it, sir ?” 

“Not now, my boy. You have got 
one thing to mind now, before alj other 
things — namely, that you give this wo- 


man, whatever she be, fair play : if she 
be your mother, as such you must take 
her — that is, as such you must treat her.” 

“Ye’re richt sir,” returned Malcolm, 
and rose. 

“Come back to. me,” said Mr. Gra- 
ham, “with whatever news you gather.” 

“ I will, sir,” answered Malcolm, and 
went to find Miss Horn. 

He was shown into the little parlor, 
which, for all the grander things he had 
been amongst of late, had lost nothing 
of its first charm. There sat Miss Horn. 
“Sit doon, Ma’colm,” she said gruffly. 

“Hae ye h’ard onything, mem ?” ask- 
ed Malcolm, standing. 

“Ay, ower muckle,” answered Miss 
Horn with all but a scowl. “Ye been 
ower to Gersefell, I reckon.” 

“Forbid it !” answered Malcolm. “ Nev- 
er till this hoor — or at maist it’s nae twa 
— sin’ I h’ard the first cheep o’ ’t, an’ 
that was frae Meg Partan. To no hu- 
man sowl hae I made mention o’ ’t yet 
’cep’ Maister Graham : to him I gaed 
direck.” 

“Ye cudna hae dime better,” said the 
grim woman with relaxing visage. 

“An’ here I am the noo, straught frae 
him, to beg o’ you. Miss Horn, to tell 
me the trowth o’ the maitter.” 

“What ken I aboot it?” she returned 
angrily. “What sud I ken ?” 

“Ye micht ken whether the wuman’s 
been sayin’ ’t or no.” 

“ Wha has ony doobt aboot that ?” 

“ Mistress Stewart has been sayin’ 
she’s my mither, than ?” 

“Ay: what for no?” returned Miss 
Horn with a piercing glower at the 
youth. 

“Guid forfen’ !” exclaimed Malcolm. 

“Say ye that, laddie?” cried Miss 
Horn, and starting up she grasped his 
arm and stood gazing in his face. 

“What ither sud I say ?” rejoined Mal- 
colm, surprised. 

“God be laudit !” exclaimed Miss Horn. 
“The limmer may say ’at she likes noo.” 

“ Ye dinna believe ’t than, mem ?” 
cried Malcolm. “Tell me ye dinna, an’ 
haud me ohn curst like a cadger.” 

“ I dinna believe ae word o’ ’t, laddie,” 
answered Miss Horn eagerly. “Wha 


MALCOLM. 


195 


cud believe sic a fine laad come o’ sic a 
fause mither ?” , 

“ She micht be onybody’s mither, an’ 
fause tu,” said Malcolm gloomily. 

“That’s true, laddie; an’ the mair 
mither the fauser. There’s a warl’ o’ 
witness i’ your face ’at gien she be yer 
mither, the markis, an no puir honest 
henpeckit John Stewart, was the father 
o’ ye. The Lord forgi’e me ! what am I 
sayin’ ?’’ adjected Miss Horn with a cry 
of self-accusation when she saw the pal- 
lor that overspread the countenance of 
the youth, and his head drop upon his 
bosom : the last arrow had sunk to the 
feather. “ It’s a’ havers, ony gait,’’ she 
quickly resumed. “ I div not believe ye 
hae ae drap o’ her bluid i’ the body o’ 
ye, man. But,’’ she hurried on, as if 
eager to obliterate the scoring impression 
of her late words, “that she’s been say- 
in’ ’t there can be no mainner o’ doobt. 
I saw her mysel’ rinnin' aboot the toon, 
frae ane till anither, wi’ her lang hair 
doon the lang back o’ her, an’ fleein’ i’ 
the win’ like a body dementit. The only 
question is, whether or no she believes ’t 
hersel’.’’ 

“What cud gar her say ’t gien she 
didna believe ’t ?’’ 

“ Fowk says she expecs that w’y to get 
a grip o’ things oot o’ the ban’s o’ the 
puir laird’s trustees : ye wad be a son o’ 
her ain, cawpable o’ mainagin’ them. 
But ye dinna tell me she’s never been at 
yersel’ aboot it ?’’ 

“ Never a blink o’ the ee has passed 
atween’s sin’ that day I gaed till Gerse- 
fell, as I tellt ye, wi a letter frae the 
markis. I thoucht I was ower mony for 
her than : I wonner she daur be at me 
again.’’ 

“ She’s daurt her God er’ noo, an’ may 
weel daur you. But what says yer gran’- 
father till ’t noo ?’’ 

“ He hasna hard a chuckle’s cheep o’ 
’t.’’ 

“ What are we haverin’ at than ? Gan- 
na he sattle the maitter afif han’ ?’’ Miss 
Horn eyed him keenly as she spoke. 

“ He kens no more aboot whaur I come 
frae, mem, nor your Jean, wha ’s heark- 
enin’ at the keyhole this verra meenute.’’ 

The quick ear of Malcolm had caught 


a slight sound of the handle, whose prox- 
imity to the keyhole was no doubt often 
troublesome to Jean. 

Miss Horn seemed to reach the door 
with one sfiang. Jean was ascending 
the last step of the stair with a message 
on her lips concerning butter and eggs. 
Miss Horn received it, and went back to 
Malcolm. “Na: Jean wadna du that,’’ 
she said quietly. 

But she was wrong, for, hearing Mal- 
colm’s words, Jean had retreated one 
step down the stair, and turned. 

“ But what’s this ye tell me aboot yer 
gran’father, honest man ?’’ Miss Horn 
continued. 

“ Duncan MacPhail ’s no bluid o’ mine, 
the mair ’s the pity !’’ said Malcolm sad- 
ly, and told her all he knew. 

Miss Horn’s visage went through won- 
derful changes as he spoke. “Weel, it 
is a mercy I hae no feelin’s,’’ she said 
when he had done. 

“Ony wuman can lay a claim till me 
’at likes, ye see,’’ said Malcolm. 

“ She may lay ’at she likes, but it’s no 
illka egg laid has a chuckie intill ’t,’’ 
answered Miss Horn sententiously. “ Jist 
ye gang hame to auld Duncan, an’ tell 
him to turn the thing ower in ’s min’ till 
he’s able to sweir to the verra nicht he 
fan’ the bairn in ’s lap. But no ae word 
maun he say to leevin’ sowl aboot it 
afore it’s requiret o’ ’im.’’ 

“ I wad be the son o’ the puirest fish- 
er-wife i’ the Seaton raither nor hers,’’ 
said Malcolm gloomily. 

“An’ it shaws ye better bred,’’ said 
Miss Horn. “ But she’ll be at ye er lang, 
an’ tak ye tent what ye say. Dinna flee 
in her face : lat her jaw awa’, an’ mark 
her words. She may lat a streak o’ licht 
oot o’ her dirk lantren oonawaurs.’’ 

Malcolm returned to Mr. Graham. 
They agreed there was nothing for it but 
to wait. He went next to his grand- 
father and gave him Miss Horn’s mes- 
sage. The old man fell a thinking, but 
could not be certain even of the year in 
which he had left his home. The clouds 
hung very black around Malcolm’s hor- 
izon. 

Since the adventure in the Baillies’ 
Barn, Lady Florimel had been on a visit 


196 


MALCOLM. 


in Morayshire : she heard nothing of the 
report until she returned. “ So you’re a 
gentleman, after all, Malcolm ?” she said 
the next time she saw him. 

The expression in her eyes appeared 
to him different from any he had en- 
countered there before. The blood rush- 
ed to his face : he dropped his head, 
and saying merely, “ It maun be a’ as it 
maun,” pursued the occupation of the 
moment. 

But her words sent a new wind blow- 
ing into the fog. A genile7nan, she had 
said. Gentlemen married ladies ! Could 
it be that a glory it was madness to dream 
of was yet a possibility ? One moment, 
and his honest heart recoiled from the 
thought : not even for Lady Florimel 
could he consent to be the son of that 
woman ! Yet the thought, especially in 
Lady Florimel’s presence, would return, 
would linger, would whisper, would 
tempt. 

In Florimel’s mind also a small de- 
mon of romance was at work. Uncor- 
rupted as yet by social influences, it 
would not have seemed to her absurd 
that an heiress of rank should marry a 
poor country gentleman. But the thought 
of marriage never entered her head : she 
only felt that the discovery justified a 
nearer approach from both sides. She 
had nothing, not even a flirtation, in 
view. Flirt she might, likely enough, 
but she did not foremean it. 

Had Malcolm been a schemer, he 
would have tried to make something of 
his position. But even the growth of 
his love for his young mistress was held 
in check by the fear of what that love 
tempted him to desire. 

Lady Florimel had by this time got so 
used to his tone and dialect, hearing it 
on all sides of her, that its quaintness 
had ceased to affect her, and its coarse- 
ness had begun to influence her repul- 
sively. There were still to be found in 
Scotland old-fashioned gentlefolk speak- 
ing the language of the country with 
purity and refinement, but Florimel had 
never met any of them, or she might 
possibly have been a little less repelled 
by Malcolm’s speech. 

Within a day or two of her return Mrs. 


Stewart called at Lossie House and had 
a long talk with her, in the course of 
which she found no difficulty in gaining 
her to promise her influence with Mal- 
colm. From his behavior on the occa- 
sion of their sole interview she stood in 
a vague awe of him, and indeed could 
not recall it without a feeling of rebuke 
— a feeling which must either turn her 
aside from her purpose or render her the 
more anxious to secure his favor. Hence 
it came that she had not yet sought him : 
she would have the certainty first that he 
was kindly disposed toward her claim — 
a thing she would never have doubted 
but for the glimpse she had had of him. 

One Saturday afternoon about this 
time Mr. Stewart put his head in at the 
door of the schoolroom, as he had done 
so often already, and seeing the master 
seated alone at his desk, walked in, say- 
ing once more, with a polite bow, ” I din- 
na ken whaur I cam frae : I want to 
come to the school.” 

Mr. Graham assured him of welcome 
as cordially as if it had been the first 
time he came with the request, and yet 
again offered him a chair ; but the laird 
as usual declined it, and walked down 
the room to find a seat with his com- 
panion-scholars. He stopped midway, 
however, and returned to the desk, where, 
standing on tiptoe, he whispered in the 
master’s ear, ” I canna come upo’ the 
door.” Then turning away again, he 
crept dejectedly to a seat where some of 
the girls had made room for him. There 
he took a slate, and began drawing what 
might seem an attempt at a door, but 
ever as he drew he blotted it out, and 
nothing that could be called a door was 
the result. Meantime, Mr. Graham was 
pondering at intervals what he had said. 

School being over, the laird was mod- 
estly leaving with the rest when the mas- 
ter gently called him, and requested the 
favor of a moment more of his company. 
As soon as they were alone he took a 
Bible from his desk and read the words, 
” I am the door : by me if any man enter 
in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and 
out, and find pasture.” 

Without comment he closed the book 
and put it away. Mr. Stewart stood 


MALCOLM. 


197 


staring up at him for a moment, then 
turned, and gently murmuring, “ I canna 
win at the door,” walked from the school- 
house. 

It was refuge the poor fellow sought — 
whether from temporal or spiritual foes 
will matter little to him who believes that 
the only shelter from the one is the only 
shelter from the other also. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 

THE BAILLIES’ BARN AGAIN. 

It began to be whispered about Port- 
lossie that the marquis had been present 
at one of the fishermen’s meetings — a 
report which variously affected the minds 
of those in the habit of composing them. 
Some regarded it as an act of espial, and 
much foolish talk arose about the Cov- 
enanters and persecution and martyr- 
dom. Others, especially the less worthy 
of those capable of public utterance — 
who were by this time, in virtue of that 
sole gift, gaining an influence of which 
they were altogether unworthy — attrib- 
uted it to the spreading renown of the 
preaching and praying members of the 
community, and each longed for an op- 
portunity of exercising his individual gift 
upon the conscience of the marquis. The 
soberer portion took it for an act of mere 
curiosity, unlikely to be repeated. 

Malcolm saw that the only way of set- 
ting things right was that the marquis 
should go again — openly — but it was 
with much difficulty that he persuaded 
him to present himself in the assembly. 
Again accompanied by his daughter and 
Malcolm, he did, however, once more 
cross the links to the Baillies’ Barn. Be- 
ing early, they had a choice of seats, and 
Florimel placed herself beside a pretty 
young woman of gentle and troubled 
countenance who sat leaning against the 
side of the cavern. 

The preacher on this occasion was the 
sickly young student — more pale and 
haggard than ever, and halfway nearer 
the grave since his first sermon. He still 
set himself to frighten the sheep into the 
fold by wolfish cries ; but it must be al- 
lowed that, in this sermon at least, his 


representations of the miseries of the 
lost were not by any means so gross as 
those usually favored by preachers of 
his kind. His imagination was sensitive 
enough to be roused by the words of 
Scripture themselves, and was not de- 
pendent for stimulus upon those of Vir- 
gil, Dante or Milton. Having taken for 
his text the fourteenth verse of the fifty- 
ninth Psalm, ‘‘And at evening let them 
return ; and let them make a noise like 
a dog, and go round about the city,” he 
dwelt first upon the condition and cha- 
racter of the Eastern dogs as contrasted 
with those of our dogs ; pointing out to 
his hearers that so far from being valued 
for use or beauty or rarity, they were, 
except swine, of all animals the most 
despised by the Jews — the vile outcasts 
of the border -land separating animals 
domestic and ferine — filthy, dangerous 
and hated; then associating with his 
text that passage in the Revelation, 
‘‘ Blessed are they that do his command- 
ments, that they may have right to the 
tree of life, and may enter in through 
the gates into the city ; for without are 
dogs,” he propounded, or rather assert- 
ed, that it described one variety of the 
many punishments of the wicked, show- 
ing at least a portion of them condemn- 
ed to rush howling for ever about the 
walls of the New Jerusalem, haunting 
the gates they durst not enter. 

‘‘ See them through the fog steaming 
up from the shores of their Phlegethon !” 
he cried, warming into eloquence ; ‘‘ see 
the horrid troop afar from the crystal 
walls ! — if indeed ye stand on those 
heights of glory, and course not around 
them with the dogs — hear them howl 
and bark as they scour along ! Gaze at 
them more earnestly as they draw nigh- 
er ; see upon the dog-heads of them the 
signs and symbols of rank and authority 
which they wore when they walked erect, 
men — ay, women too, among men and 
women : see the crown-jewels flash over 
the hanging ears, the tiara tower thrice- 
circled over the hungry eyes ! see the 
plumes and the coronets, the hoods and 
the veils !” 

Here, unhappily for his eloquence, he 
slid off into the catalogue of women’s 


198 


MALCOLM. 


finery given by the prophet Isaiah, at 
the close of which he naturally found 
the oratorical impulse gone, and had to 
sit down in the mud of an anticlimax. 
Presently, however, he recovered him- 
self, and spreading his wings once more 
swung himself aloft into the empyrean 
of an eloquence which, whatever else it 
might or might not be, was at least 
genuine. 

“ Could they but surmount those walls 
whose inherent radiance is the artillery 
of their defence — those walls high-up- 
lifted, whose lowest foundations are such 
stones as make the glory of earthly 
crowns — could they overleap those gates 
of pearl and enter the golden streets, 
what, think ye, would they do there ? 
Think ye they would rage hither and 
thither at will, making horrid havoc 
amongst the white-robed inhabitants of 
the sinless capital ? Nay, verily ; for in 
the gold transparent as glass they would 
see their own vile forms in truth-telling 
reflex, and turning in agony would rush 
yelling back, out again into the darkness, 
the outer darkness, to go round and 
round the city again and for evermore, 
tenfold tortured henceforth with the 
memory of their visioned selves.” 

Here the girl beside Lady Florimel 
gave a loud cry, and fell backward from 
her seat. On all sides arose noises, loud 
or suppressed, mingled with murmurs of 
expostulation. Even Lady Florimel, in- 
vaded by shrieks, had to bite her lips 
hard to keep herself from responding 
with like outcry ; for scream will call 
forth scream, as vibrant string from its 
neighbor will draw the answering tone. 

“Deep calleth unto deep! The wind 
is blowing on the slain 1 The spirit is 
breathing on the dry bones!” shouted 
the preacher in an ecstasy. But one who 
rose from behind Lizzy Findlay had ar- 
rived at another theory regarding the 
origin of the commotion ; and doubtless 
had a right to her theory, inasmuch as 
she was a woman of experience, being 
no other than Mrs. Catanach. 

At the sound of her voice seeking to 
soothe the girl, Malcolm shuddered ; but 
the next moment, from one of those 
freaks of suggestion which defy analysis. 


he burst into laughter : he had a glimpse 
of a she-dog, in Mrs. Catanach’s Sun- 
day bonnet, bringing up the rear of the 
preacher’s canine company, and his 
horror of the woman found relief in an 
involuntary outbreak that did not spring 
altogether from merriment. 

It attracted no attention. The cries 
increased, for the preacher continued to 
play on the harp-nerves of his hearers, 
in the firm belief that the Spirit was be- 
ing poured out upon them. The mar- 
quis, looking very pale, for he could 
never endure the cry of a woman, even 
in a play, rose, and taking Florimel by 
the arm, turned to leave the place. Mal- 
colm hurried to the front to make way 
for them. But the preacher caught sight 
of the movement, and filled with a fury 
which seemed to him sacred rushed to 
the rescue of souls. “Stop!” he shout- 
ed. “Go not hence, I charge you. On 
your lives I charge you ! Turn ye, turn 
ye : why will ye die ? There is no flee- 
ing from Satan. 'You must resist the 
devil. He that flies is lost.' If you turn 
your backs upon Apollyon, he will never 
slacken pace until he has driven you into 
the troop of his dogs, to go howling 
about the walls of the city. Stop them, 
friends of the cross, ere they step be- 
yond the sound of mercy ; for, alas ! the 
voice of him who is sent cannot reach 
beyond the particle of time wherein he 
speaks. Now, this one solitary moment, 
gleaming out of the eternity before us 
only to be lost in the eternity behind us 
— this now is the accepted time ; this 
NOW and no other is the moment of 
salvation !” 

Most of the men recognized the mar- 
quis : some near the entrance saw only 
Malcolm clearing the way. Marquis or 
fisher, it was all the same when souls 
were at stake; they crowded with one 
consent to oppose their exit : yet another 
chance they must have, whether they 
would or not. These men were in the 
mood to give — not their own — but those 
other men’s bodies to be burnt on the 
poorest chance of saving their souls from 
the everlasting burnings. 

Malcolm would have been ready 
enough for a fight had he and the mar- 


MALCOLM. 


199 


quis been alone, but the presence of 
Lady Florimel put it out of the question. 
Looking round, he sought the eye of his 
master. 

Had Lord Lossie been wise, he would 
at once have yielded, and sat down to 
endure to the end. But he jumped on 
the form next him and appealed to the 
common sense of the assembly. “ Don’t 
you see the man is mad ?” he said, point- 
ing to the preacher. “ He is foaming at 
the mouth. For God’s sake look after 
your women : he will have them all in 
hysterics in another five minutes. I 
wonder any man of sense would coun- 
tenance such things !” 

As to hysterics, the fisher-folk had 
never heard of them ; and though the 
words of the preacher were not those of 
soberness, they yet believed them the 
words of truth, and himself a far saner 
man than the marquis. 

“Gien a body comes to oor meetin’,” 
cried one of them, a fine specimen of 
the argle-bargling Scotchman — a crea- 
mre known and detested over the habit- 
r.ble globe — ^“he maun just du as we du, 
an’ sit it oot. It’s for yer sowl’s guid.” 

The preacher, checked in full career, 
was standing with open mouth, ready to 
burst forth in a fresh flood of oratory so 
soon as the open channels of hearing 
ears should be again granted him ; but 
all were now intent on the duel between 
the marquis and Jamie Ladle. 

“ If the next time you came you found 
the entrance barricaded,” said the mar- 
quis, “what would you say to that ?” 

“Ow, we wad jist tak doon the sticks,” 
answered Ladle. 

“You would call \\.persecution, wouldn’t 
you T 

“Ay, it wad be that.” 

“And what do you call it now, when 
you prevent a man from going his own 
way after he has had enough of your 
foolery ?” 

“Ow, we ca’ ’t dissiplene,” answered 
the fellow. 

The marquis got down, annoyed, but 
laughing at his own discomfiture. 

“ I’ve stopped the screaming anyhow,” 
he said. 

Ere the preacher, the tap of whose 


eloquence presently began to yield again, 
but at first ran very slow, had gathered 
way enough to carry his audience with 
him, a woman rushed up to the mouth 
of the cave, the borders of her cap flap- 
ping, and her gray hair flying like an 
old Maenad’s. Brandishing in her hand 
the spurtle with which she had been 
making the porridge for supper, she cried 
in a voice that reached every ear, “What’s 
this I hear o’ ’t ! Come oot o’ that, Liz- 
zy, ye limmer ! Ir ye gaun’ frae ill to 
waur, i’ the deevil’s name ?” 

It was Meg Partan. She sent the con- 
gregation right and left from her, as a 
ship before the wind sends a wave from 
each side of her bows. Men and wo- 
men gave place to her, and she went 
surging into the midst of the assembly. 
“ Whaur’s that lass o’ mine ?” she cried, 
looking about her in aggravated wrath 
at failing to pounce right upon her. 

“She’s no verra weel, Mistress Find- 
lay,” cried Mrs. Catanach in a loud whis- 
per, laden with an insinuating tone of 
intercession. “She’ll be better in a meen- 
ute. The minister’s jist ower pooerfu’ 
the nicht.” 

Mrs. Findlay made a long reach, caught 
Lizzy by the arm and dragged her forth, 
looking scared and white, with a red spot 
upon one cheek. No one dared to bar 
Meg’s exit with her prize ; and the mar- 
quis, with Lady Florimel and Malcolm, 
took advantage of the opening she made, 
and following in her wake soon reached 
the open air. 

Mrs. Findlay was one of the few of 
the fisherwomen who did not approve 
of conventicles, being a great stickler for 
every authority in the country except that 
of husbands, in which she declared she 
did not believe : a report had reached' 
her that Lizzy was one of the lawless that 
evening, and in. hot haste she had left 
the porridge on the fire to drag her home. 

“This is the second predicament you 
have got us into, MacPhail,” said his 
lordship as they walked along the Boar’s 
Tail — the name by which some desig- 
nated the dune, taking the name of the 
rock at the end of it to be the Boar’s 
Craig, and the last word to mean, as 
it often does, not crag, but neck, like 


200 


MALCOLM. 


the German kragen, and perhaps the 
English scrag. 

“ I’m sorry for’t, my lord,” said Mal- 
colm, ‘‘but I’m sure yer lordship had the 
worth o’ ’t in fun.” 

‘‘ I can’t deny that,” returned the mar- 
quis. 

‘‘And I can’t get that horrid shriek 
out of my ears,” said Lady Florimel. 

‘‘Which of them?” said her father. 
‘‘ There was no end to the shrieking. It 
nearly drove me wild.” 

‘‘ I mean the poor girl’s who sat beside 
us, papa. Such a pretty, nice-looking 
creature too ! And that horrid woman 
close behind us all the time ! I hope 
you won’t go again, papa. They’ll 
convert you if you do, and never ask 
your leave. You wouldn’t like that, / 
know.” 

‘‘What do you say to shutting up the 
place altogether?” 

"'Do, papa. It’s shocking, vulgar and 
horrid !” 

‘‘ I wad think twise, my lord, afore I 
wad sair [serve) them as ill as they saired 
me.” 

‘‘Did I ask your advice?” said the 
marquis sternly. 

‘‘ It’s nane the waur ’at it ’s gien oon- 
soucht,” said Malcolm. ‘‘It’s the richt 
thing, ony gait.” 

‘‘You presume on this foolish report 
about you, I suppose, MacPhail,” said 
his lordship ; ‘‘but that won’t do.” 

‘‘ God forgie ye, my lord, for I hae ill 
duin’ ’t! [Jltid it difficult)" said Mal- 
colm. 

He left them, and walked down to the 
foamy lip of the tide, which was just 
waking up from its faint recession. A 
cold glimmer, which seemed to come 
from nothing but its wetness, was all the 
sea had to say for itself. 

But the marquis smiled, and turned 
his face toward the wind which was 
♦blowing from the south. 

In a few moments Malcolm came back, 
but to follow behind them and say noth- 
ing more that night. 

The marquis did not interfere with the 
fishermen. Having heard of their rude- 
ness, Mr. Cairns called again and press- 
ed him to end the whole thing, but he 


said they would only be after something 
worse, and refused. 

The turn things had taken that night 
determined their after course. Cryings 
out and faintings grew common, and fits 
began to appear. A few laid claim to 
visions, bearing, it must be remarked, a 
strong resemblance to the similitudes, 
metaphors and more extended poetic fig- 
ures employed by the young preacher, 
becoming at length a little more original 
and a good deal more grotesque. They 
took to dancing at last, not by any means 
the least healthful mode of working off 
their excitement. It was, however, hard- 
ly more than a dull beating of time to 
the monotonous chanting of a few re- 
ligious phrases, rendered painfully com- 
monplace by senseless repetition. 

I would not be supposed to deny the 
genuineness of the emotion, or even of 
the religion, in many who thus gave 
show to their feelings. But neither those 
who were good before nor those who 
were excited now were much the better 
for this and like modes of playing off 
the mental electricity generated by the 
revolving cylinder of intercourse. Nat- 
urally, such men as Joseph Mair now 
grew shy of the assemblies they had 
helped to originate, and withdrew — at 
least into the background: the reins 
slipped from the hands of the first lead- 
ers, and such windbags as Ladle got up 
to drive the chariot of the gospel with 
the results that could not fail to follow. 
At the same time it must be granted that 
the improvement of their habits, in so 
far as strong drink was concerned, con- 
tinued : it became almost a test of faith 
with them whether or not a man was 
a total abstainer. Hence their moral 
manners, so to say, improved greatly : 
there were no more public-house orgies, 
no fighting in the streets, very little of 
what they called breaking of the Sab- 
bath, and altogether there was a mark- 
ed improvement in the look of things 
along a good many miles of that north- 
ern shore. 

Strange as it may seem, however, mo- ' 
rality, in the deeper sense, remained very 
much at the same low ebb as before. It 
is much easier to persuade men that God 


MALCOLM. 


201 


cares for certain observances than that 
he cares for simple honesty and truth 
and gentleness and loving - kindness. 
The man who would shudder at the idea 
of a rough word of the description com- 
monly called swearing will not even 
have a twinge of conscience after a whole 
morning of ill-tempered sullenness, ca- 
pricious scolding, villainously unfair ani- 
madversion or surly cross-grained treat- 
ment generally of wife and children. 
Such a man will omit neither family 
worship nor a sneer at his neighbor. He 
will neither milk his cow on the first day 
of the week without a Sabbath mask on 
his face, nor remove it while he waters 
the milk for his customers. Yet he may 
not be an absolute hypocrite. What can 
be done for him, however, hell itself may 
have to determine. v 

Notwithstanding their spiritual experi- 
ences, it was, for instance, no easier to 
get them to ]iay their debts than here- 
tofore. Of conrse there were, and had 
always been, thoroughly honest men 
and women amongst them ; but there 
were others who took prominent part in 
their observances who seemed to have 
no remotest suspicion that religion had 
anything to do with money or money’s 
worth — not to know that God cared 
whether a child of his met his obliga- 
tions or not. Such fulfilled the injunc- 
tion to owe nothing by acknowledging 
nothing. One man, when pressed, gave 
as a reason for his refusal that Christ 
had paid all his debts. Possibly this 
contemptible state of feeling had been 
fostered by an old superstition that it 
was unlucky to pay up everything, 
whence they had always been in the 
habit of leaving at least a few shillings 
of their shop-bills to be carried forward 
to the settlement after the next fishing- 
season. But when a widow whose hus- 
band had left property would acknow- 
ledge no obligation to discharge his 
debts, it came to be rather more than a 
mere whim. Evidently, the religion of 
many of them was as yet of a very poor 
sort, precisely like that of the negroes, 
whose devotion so far outstrips their 
morality. 

If there had but been some one of 


themselves to teach that the true outlet 
and sedative of overstrained feeling is 
right action ! — that the performance of 
an unpleasant duty, say the paying of 
their debts, was a far more effectual as 
well as more specially religious mode of 
working off their excitement than dan- 
cing ! — that feeling is but the servant of 
character until it becomes its child, or, 
rather, that feeling is but a mere vapor 
until condensed into character! — that 
the otily process through which it can be 
thus consolidated is well-doing, the put- 
ting forth of the right thing according to 
the conscience universal and individual ! 
— and that thus, and thus only, can the veil 
be withdrawn from between the man and 
his God, and the man be saved in behold- 
ing the face of his Father 1 

“ But have patience — give them time,” 
said Mr. Graham, who had watched the 
whole thing from the beginning. ‘‘ If their 
religion is religion, it will work till it puri- 
fies : if it is not, it will show itself for what 
it is by plunging them into open vice. The 
mere excitement and its extravagance— 
the mode in which their gladness breaks 
out — means nothing either way. The 
man is the willing, performing being, not 
the feeling, shouting, singing being : in 
the latter there may be no individuality 
— nothing more than receptivity of the 
movement of the mass. But when a 
man gets up and goes out and discharges 
an obligation, he is an individual : to 
him God has spoken, and he has opened 
his ears to hear. God and that man are 
henceforth in communion.” 

These doings, however, gave — how 
should they fail to give ? — a strong handle 
to the grasp of those who cared for noth- 
ing in religion but its respectability — who 
went to church, Sunday after Sunday, 
“for the sake of example,” as they said 
— the most arrogant of pharisaical rea- 
sons. Many a screeching, dancing fish- 
er-lass in the Seaton was far nearer the 
kingdom of heaven than the most re- 
spectable of such respectable people. I 
would unspeakably rather dance with the 
wildest of fenatics rejoicing over a change 
in their own spirits than sit in the seat 
of the dull of heart to whom the old 
story is an outworn tale. 


202 


MALCOLM. 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

MOUNT PISGAH. 

The intercourse between Florimel and 
Malcolm grew gradually more familiar, 
until at length it was often hardly to be 
distinguished from such as takes place 
between equals, and Florimel was by 
degrees forgetting the present condition 
in the possible future of the young man. 
But Malcolm, on the other hand, as often 
as the thought of that possible future 
arose in her presence, flung it from him 
in horror, lest the wild dream of winning 
her should make him for a moment de- 
sire its realization. 

The claim that hung over him haunted 
his very life, turning the currents of his 
thought into channels of speculation un- 
known before. Imagine a young fisher- 
man meditating, as he wandered with 
bent head through the wilder woods on 
the steep banks of the burn, or the little 
green levels which it overflowed in the 
winter, of all possible subjects — what 
analogy there might be ’twixt the body 
and the soul in respect of derivation ; 
whether the soul was traduced as well 
as the body ; as his material form came 
from the forms of his father and mother, 
did his soul come from their souls ? or 
did the Maker, as at the first he breath- 
ed his breath into the form of Adam, 
still, at some crisis unknown in its crea- 
tion, breathe into each form the breath 
of individual being ? If the latter theory 
were the true, then, be his earthly origin 
what it might, he had but to shuffle off 
this mortal coil to walk forth a clean 
thing, as a prince might cast off the rags 
of an enforced disguise and set out for 
the land of his birth. If the former 
were the true, then the well-spring of his 
being was polluted, nor might he by any 
death fling aside his degradation or show 
himself other than defiled in the eyes of 
the old dwellers in “those high countries “ 
where all things seem as they are, and 
are as they seem. 

One day when, these questions fight- 
ing in his heart, he had for the hundredth 
time arrived thus far, all at once it seem- 
ed as if a soundless voice in the depth 
of his soul replied, “ Even then — should 
the well-spring of thy life be polluted 


with vilest horrors such as, in Persian 
legends, the lips of the lost are doomed 
to drink with loathings inconceivable — 
the well is but the utterance of the wa- 
ter, not the source of its existence: the 
rain is its father, and comes from the 
sweet heavens. Thy soul, however it 
became known to itself, is from the pure 
heart of God, whose thought of thee is 
older than thy being — is its first and eld- 
est cause. Thy essence cannot be de- 
filed, for in Him it is eternal.” 

Even with the thought the horizon of 
his life began to clear : a light came out 
on the far edge of its ocean — a dull and 
sombre yellow, it is true, and the clouds 
hung yet heavy over sea and land, while 
miles of vapor hid the sky, but he could 
now believe there might be a blue be- 
yond in which the sun lorded it with 
majesty. 

He had been rambling on the waste 
hill in which the grounds of Lossie House, 
as it were, dissipated. It had a far out- 
look, but he had beheld neither sky nor 
ocean. The Soutars of Cromarty had 
all the time sat on their stools large in 
his view; the hills of Sutherland had in- 
vited his gaze, rising faint and clear over 
the darkened water at their base, less 
solid than the sky in which they were 
set, and less a fact than the clouds that 
crossed their breasts ; the land of Caith- 
ness had lain lowly and afar, as if, weary 
of great things, it had crept away in 
tired humility to the rigors of the North ; 
and east and west his own rugged shore 
had gone lengthening out, fringed with 
the white burst of the dark sea ; but none 
of all these things had he noted. 

Lady Florimel suddenly encountered 
him on his way home, and was startled 
by his look. “Where have you been, 
Malcolm ?” she exclaimed. 

“I hardly ken, my leddy,” he answer- 
ed : “somewhaur aboot the feet o’ Mount 
Pisgah, I’m thinkin’, if no freely upo’ the 
heid o’ ’t.” 

“That’s not the name of the hill up 
there ?” 

“ Ow na : yon’s the Binn.” 

“ What have you been about ? Look- 
ing at things in general, I suppose.” 

“ Na : they’ve been luikin’ at me, ) 


MALCOLM. 


203 


daur say, but I didna heed them, an’ 
they didna fash me.” 

“You look so strangely bright,” she 
said, “ as if you had seen something both 
marvelous and beautiful.” 

The words revealed a quality of in- 
sight not hitherto manifested by Flori- 
mel. In truth, Malcolm’s whole being 
was irradiated by the flash of inward 
peace that had just visited him — a state- 
ment intelligible and therefore credible 
enough to the mind accustomed to look 
over the battlements of the walls that 
clasp the fair windows of the senses. 
But Florimel’s insight had reached its 
limit, and her judgment, vainly endeav- 
oring to penetrate farther, fell flounder- 
ing in the mud. 

“I know,” she went on. “You have 
been to see your lady mother."” 

Malcolm’s face turned white as if 
blasted with leprosy. The same scourge 
that had maddened the poor laird fell 
hissing on his soul, and its knotted sting 
was the same word mother. He turned 
and walked slowly away, fighting a tyran- 
nous impulse to thrust his fingers in his 
ears and run and shriek. 

“ Where are your manners ?” cried the 
girl after him, but he never stayed his 
slow foot or turned his bowed head, and 
Florimel wondered. 

For the moment his new-found peace 
had vanished. Even if the old nobility 
of heaven might regard him without a 
shadow of condescension — that self- 
righteous form of contempt — what could 
he do with a mother whom he could 
neither honor nor love ? Love ! If he 
could but cease to hate her ! There was 
no question yet of loving. 

But might she not repent? Ah, then, 
indeed ! And might he not help her to 
repent ? He would not avoid her. How 
was it that she had never yet sought 
him ? 

As he brooded thus on his way to 
Duncan’s cottage, and, heedless of the 
sound of coming wheels, was crossing 
the road which went along the bottom 
of the glen, he was nearly run over by a 
carriage coming round the corner of a 
high bank at a fast trot. Catching one 
glimpse of the face of its occupant as it 


passed within a yard of his own, he turn- 
ed and fled back through the woods, 
with again a horrible impulse to howl to 
the winds the cry of the mad laird, “ I 
dinna ken whaur I cam frae !” When 
he came to himself he found his hands 
pressed hard on his ears, and for a mo- 
ment felt a sickening certainty that he 
too was a son of the lady of Gersefell. 

When he returned at length to the 
House, Mrs. Courthope informed him 
that Mrs. Stewart had called and seen 
both the marquis and Lady Florimel. 

Meantime, he had grown again a little 
anxious about the laird, but, as Phemy 
plainly avoided him, had concluded that 
he had found another concealment, and 
that the child preferred not being ques- 
tioned concerning it. 

With the library of Lossie House at 
his disposal, and almost nothing to do, 
it might now have been a grand time 
for Malcolm’s studies ; but, alas ! he too 
often found it all but impossible to keep 
his mind on the track of a thought 
through a single sentence of any length. 

The autumn now hung over the verge 
of its grave. Hoar-frost, thick on the 
fields, made its mornings look as if they 
had turned gray with fear. But when 
the sun arose grayness and fear vanish- 
ed : the back-thrown smile of the depart- 
ing glory was enough to turn old age 
into a memory of youth. Summer was 
indeed gone, and winter was nigh with 
its storms and its fogs and its rotting 
rains and its drifting snows, but the sun 
was yet in the heavens, and changed as 
was his manner toward her, would yet 
have many a half smile for the poor old 
earth — enough to keep her alive until he 
returned, bringing her youth with him. 
To the man who believes that the winter 
is but for the sake of the summer, ex- 
ists only in virtue of the summer at its 
heart, no winter, outside or in, can 
be unendurable. But Malcolm sorely 
missed the ministrations of compulsion : 
he lacked labor, the most helpful and 
most healing of all God’s holy things, 
of which we so often lose the heavenly 
benefit by laboring inordinately that we 
may rise above the earthly need of it. 
How many sighs are wasted over the 


204 


MALCOLM. 


toil of the sickly i — a toil which perhaps 
lifts off half the weight of their sickness, 
elevates their inner life and makes the 
outer pass with tenfold rapidity. Of 
those who honestly pity such, many 
would themselves be far less pitiable 
were they compelled to share in the toil 
they behold with compassion. They are 
unaware of the healing virtue which the 
thing they would not pity at all were it a 
matter of choice gains from the compul- 
sion of necessity. 

All over the house big fires were glow- 
ing and blazing. Nothing pleased the 
marquis worse than the least appearance 
of stinting the consumption of coal. In 
the library two huge gratefuls were burn- 
ing from dawn to midnight — well for the 
books anyhow, if their owner seldom 
showed his face amongst them. There 
were days during which, except the ser- 
vant whose duty it was to attend to the 
fires, not a creature entered the room 
but Malcolm. To him it was as the 
cave of Aladdin to the worshiper of 
Mammon, and yet now he would often 
sit down indifferent to its hoarded splen- 
dors and gather no jewels. 

But one morning, as he sat there alone, 
in an oriel looking seaward, there lay on 
a table before him a thin folio, contain- 
ing the chief works of Sir Thomas Browne 
— amongst the rest his well-known Re- 
ligio Medici, from which he had just 
read the following passage : “ When I 
take a full view and circle of myself, 
without this reasonable moderatour and 
equall piece of justice. Death, I doe con- 
ceive my self the most miserablest per- 
son extant ; were there not another life 
that I hoped for, all the vanities of this 
world should not intreat a moment’s 
breath from me ; could the Devil work 
my belief to imagine I could never die, 
I would not outlive that very thought ; 
I have so abject a conceit of this com- 
mon way of existence, this retaining to 
the Sun and elements, I cannot think 
this is to be a man or to live according 
to the dignity of humanity. In expecta- 
tion of a better, I can with patience em- 
brace this life, yet in my best meditations 
do often desire death ; I honour any man 
that contemnes it, nor can I highly love 


any that is afraid of it : this makes me 
naturally love a Soldier, and honour those 
tatter’d and contemptible Regiments that 
will die at the command of a Sergeant.” 

These words so fell in with the pre- 
vailing mood of his mind that, having 
gathered them, they grew upon him, and 
as he pondered them he sat gazing out 
on the bright blowing autumn day. The 
sky was dimmed with a clear pallor, 
across which small white clouds were 
driving : the yellow leaves that yet clave 
to the twigs were few, and the wind swept 
through the branches with a hiss. The 
far-off sea was alive with multitudinous 
white — the rush of the jubilant over-sea 
across the blue plain. All without was 
merry, healthy, radiant, strong : in his 
mind brooded a single haunting thought 
that already had almost filled his horizon, 
threatening by exclusion to become mad* 
ness. Why should he not leave the place, 
and the horrors of his history with it ? 
Then the hideous hydra might unfold 
itself as it pleased: he would find at 
least a better fortune than his birth had 
endowed him withal. 

Lady Florimel entered in search of 
something to read : to her surprise, for 
she had heard of no arrival, in one of 
the windows sat a highland gentleman 
looking out on the landscape. She was 
on the point of retiring again when a 
slight movement revealed Malcolm. The 
explanation was, that the marquis, their 
seafaring over, had at length persuaded 
Malcolm to don the highland attire : it 
was an old custom of the House of Los- 
sie that its lord’s henchman should be 
thus distinguished, and the marquis him- 
self wore the kilt when on his western 
estates in the summer, also as often as 
he went to court — would indeed have 
worn it always but that he was no longer 
hardy enough. He would not have suc- 
ceeded with Malcolm, however, but for 
the youth’s love to Duncan, the fervent 
heat of which vaporized the dark heavy 
stone of obligation into the purple vapor 
of gratitude, and enhanced the desire of 
pleasing him until it became almost a 
passion. Obligation is a ponderous roll 
of canvas which Love spreads aloft into 
a tent wherein he delights to dwell. 


MALCOLM, 


205 


This was his first appearance in the 
garments of Duncan’s race. It was no 
little trial to him to assume them in the 
changed aspect of his circumstances ; 
for, alas ! he wore them in right of ser- 
vice only, not of birth, and the tartan of 
his lord’s family was all he could claim. 

He had not heard Lady Florimel enter. 
She went softly up behind him and laid 
her hand on his shoulder. He started 
to his feet. 

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said, 
retreating a step or two. 

” I wad gie twa to be rid o’ them,” he 
returned, shaking his bushy head as if 
to scare the invisible ravens hovering 
about it. 

“ How fine you are !” Florimel went 
on, regarding him with an approbation 
too open to be altogether gratifying. 
‘‘The dress suits you thoroughly. I 
didn’t know you at first : I thought it 
must be some friend of papa’s. Now I 
remember he said once you must wear 
the proper dress for a henchman. How 
do you like it ?” 

‘‘ It’s a’ ane to me,” said Malcolm. ‘‘ I 
dinna care what I weir, gien only I had 
a richt till ’t,” he added with a sigh. 

‘‘ It is too bad of you, Malcolm,” re- 
joined Florimel in a tone of rebuke. 
‘‘The moment Fortune offers you favor 
you fall out with her — ^won’t give her a 
single smile. You don’t deserve your 
good luck.” 

Malcolm was silent. 

‘‘There’s something on your mind,” 
Florimel went on, partly from willing- 
ness to serve Mrs. Stewart, partly enticed 
by the romance of being Malcolm’s com- 
forter, or perhaps confessor. 

‘‘Ay is there, my leddy.” 

‘‘What is it ? Tell me : you can trust 
me ?” 

‘‘ I could trust ye, but I canna tell ye. 

- I daurna — I maunna.” 

‘‘ I see you will not trust me,” said 
Florimel, with a half-pretended, half-real 
offence. 

‘‘ I wad lay doon my life — what there 
is o’ ’t— for ye, my leddy ; but the verra 
natur’ o’ my trouble winna be tauld. I 
maun beir ’t my lane.” 

It flashed across Lady Florimel’s brain 


that the cause of his misery, the thing 
he dared not confess, was love of her- 
self. Now, Malcolm, standing before 
her in his present dress and interpreted 
by the knowledge she believed she had 
of his history, was a very different per- 
son indeed from the former Malcolm in 
the guise of fisherman or sailor, and she 
felt as well as saw the difference : if she 
was the cause of his misery, why should 
she not comfort him a little ? why should 
she not be kind to him ? Of course any- 
thing more was out of the question, but 
a little confession and consolation would 
hurt neither of them. Besides, Mrs. 
Stewart had begged her influence, and 
this would open a new channel for its 
exercise. Indeed, if he was unhappy 
through her, she ought to do what she 
might for him. A gentle word or two 
would cost her nothing, and might help 
to heal a broken heart. She was hardly 
aware, however, how little she wanted it 
healed — all at once. 

For the potency of a thought it is per- 
haps even better that it should not be 
logically displayed to the intellect : any- 
how, the germ of all this, undeveloped 
into the definite forms I have given, suf- 
ficed to the determining of Florimel’s 
behavior. I do not mean that she had 
more than the natural tendency of wo- 
mankind to enjoy the emotions of which 
she was the object ; but besides the one 
in the fable, there are many women with 
a tendency to mousing ; and the idea of 
deriving pleasure from the sufferings of 
a handsome youth was not quite so re- 
pulsive to her as it ought to have been. 
At the same time, as there cannot be 
many cats capable of understanding the 
agonies of the mice within reach of their 
waving whiskers, probably many cat- 
women are not quite so cruel as they 
seem. ^ 

"Can't you trust me, Malcolm?” she 
said, looking in his eyes very sweetly and 
bending a little toward him : "can't you 
trust me ?” 

At the words and the look it seemed 
as if his frame melted to ether. He 
dropped on his knees, and, his heart 
half stifled in the confluence of the tides 
of love and misery, sighed out between 


2o6 


MALCOLM, 


the pulses in his throat, “There’s nae- 
thing I could na tell ye ’at ever I thoucht 
or did i’ my life, my leddy ; but it’s ither 
fowk, my leddy. It’s like to burn a hole 
in’ my hert, an’ yet I daurna open my 
mou’.’’ 

There was a half - angelic, half- dog- 
like entreaty in his up-looking hazel eyes 
that seemed to draw hers down into his : 
she must put a stop to that. “ Get up, 
Malcolm,’’ she said kindly : “ what would 
my father or Mrs. Courthope think?’’ 

“ I dinna ken, an’ I ’maist dinna care : 
atween ae thing an’ anither I’m near- 
han’ distrackit,’’ replied Malcolm, rising 
slowly, but not taking his eyes from her 
face. “An’ there’s my daddy,” he went 
on, “ ’maist won ower to the enemy ; an’ 
I daurna tell even him what for I canna 
bide it. Ye haena been sayin’ onything 
till him, hiv ye, my leddy ?” 

“ I don’t quite understand you,” re- 
turned Florimel, rather guiltily, for she 
had spoken on the subject to Duncan. 
“ Saying anything to your grandfather ? 
About what ?” 

“Aboot — aboot — her, ye ken, my led- 

dy-” 

“What her?” asked Florimel. 

“Her ’at — The leddy o’ Gersefell.” 

“And why — ? What of her? Why, 
Malcolm, what can have possessed you ? 
You seem actually to dislike her.” 

“ I canna bide her,” said Malcolm, 
with the calm earnestness of one who is 
merely stating an incontrovertible fact, 
and for a moment his eyes, at once trou- 
bled and solemn, kept looking wistfully 
in hers, as if searching for a comfort too 
good to be found, then slowly sank and 
sought the floor at her feet. 

“And why ?” 

“ I canna tell ye.” 

She supposed it an unreasoned an- 
tipathy. “ But that is very wrong,” she 
said, almost as if rebuking a child. “You 
ought to be ashamed of yourself. What ! 
dislike your own mother?” 

“ Dinna say the word, my leddy,” 
cried Malcolm in a tone of agony, “or 
ye’ll gar me skirl an’ rin like the mad 
laird. He’s no a hair madder nor I wad 
be wi’ sic a mither.” 

He would have passed her to leave 


the room. But Lady Florimel could not 
bear defeat. In any contest she must 
win or be shamed in her own eyes, and 
was she to gain absolutely nothing in 
such a passage with a fisher-lad ? Was 
the billow of her persuasion to fall back 
from such a rock, self-beaten into poor- 
est foam ? She would, she must, subdue 
him. Perhaps she did not know how 
much the sides of her intent were prick- 
ed by the nettling discovery that she was 
not the cause of his unhappiness. 

“You’re not going to leave me so?” 
she exclaimed in a tone of injury. 

“I’ll gang or bide as you wull, my 
leddy,” answered Malcolm resignedly. 

“ Bide then,” she returned. “ I haven’t 
half done with you yet.” 

“Ye maunna jist tear my hert oot,” he 
rejoined with a sad half smile and an- 
other of his dog-like looks. 

“That’s what you would do to your 
mother,” said Florimel severely. 

“Say nae ill o’ my mither!” cried 
Malcolm, suddenly changing almost to 
fierceness. 

“Why, Malcolm,” said Florimel, be- 
wildered, “ what ill was I saying of her ?” 

“ It’s naething less than an insu/t to 
my mither to ca’ yon wuman by her 
name,” he replied with set teeth. 

It was to him an offence against the 
idea of motherhood — against the moth- 
er he had so often imagined luminous 
against the dull blank of memory — to 
call such a woman his mother. 

“ She’s a very ladylike, handsome wo- 
man — handsome enough to be your 
mother even, Mr. Malcolm Stewart.” 

Florimel could not have dared the 
words but for the distance between them, 
but then neither would she have said 
them while the distance was greater. 
They were lost on Malcolm, though, for 
never in his life having started the ques- 
tion whether he was handsome or not, 
he merely supposed her making game 
of him, and drew himself together in 
silence, with the air of one bracing him- 
self to hear and endure the worst. 

“ Even if she should not be your moth- 
er,” his tormentor resumed, “to show 
such a dislike to any woman is nothing 
less than cruelty.” 


MALCOLM. 


207 


“She maun pruv’ ’t,” murmured Mal- 
colm, not the logs emphatically that the 
words were but just audible. 

“ Of course she will do that : she has 
abundance of proof. She gave me a 
whole hour of proof.’’ 

“Lang’s no strang,’’ returned Mal- 
colm: “there’s comfort i’ that. Gang 
on, my leddy.’’ 

“ Poor woman ! it was hard enough to 
lose her son, but to find him again such 
as you seem likely to turn out, I should 
think ten times worse.’’ 

“Nae doobt, nae doobt. But there’s 
ae thing waur.’’ 

“What is that ?’’ 

“To come upon a mither ’at — ’’ 

He stopped abruptly : his eyes went 
wandering about the room, and the mus- 
cles of his face worked convulsively. 

Florimel saw that she had been driv- 
ing against a stone wall. She paused a 
moment, and then resumed. “Anyhow, 
if she is your mother,’’ she said, “ noth- 
ing you can do will alter it.’’ 

“She maun pruv’ ’t,’’ was all Mal- 
colm’s dogged reply. 

“Just so ; and if she can’t,’’ said Flori- 
mel, “you’ll be no worse than you were 
before — and no better,’’ she added with 
a sigh. 

Malcolm lifted his questioning to her 
searching eyes. 

“ Don’t you see,’’ she went on very 
softly, and lowering her look, from the 
half-conscious shame of half-unconscious 
falseness, “ I can’t be all my life here at 
Lossie ? We shall have to say good-bye 
to each other — never to meet again, 
most likely. But if you should turn out 
to be of good family, you know — ’’ 

’ Florimel saw neither the paling of his 
brown cheek nor the great surge of red 
that followed, but, glancing up to spy 
the effect of her argument, did see the 
lightning that broke from the darkened 
hazel of his eyes, and again cast down 
her own. “ — Then there might be some 
chance,’’ she went on, “of our meeting 
somewhere — in London, or perhaps in 
Edinburgh, and I could ask you to my 
house — after I was married, you know.’’ 

Heaven and earth seemed to close 
with a snap around his brain. The next 


moment they had receded an immeas- 
urable distance, and in limitless wastes 
of exhausted being he stood alone. What 
time had passed when he came to him- 
self he had not an idea : it might have 
been hours for anything his conscious- 
ness was able to tell him. But although 
he recalled nothing of what she had been 
urging, he grew aware that Lady Flori- 
mel’s voice, which was now in his ears, 
had been sounding in them all the lime. 
He was standing before her like a mar- 
ble statue with a dumb thrill in its help- 
less heart of stone. He must end this. 
Parting was bad enough, but an endless 
parting was unendurable. To know that 
measureless impassable leagues lay be- 
tween them, and yet to be for ever in the 
shroud of a cold leavetaking ! To look 
in her eyes, and know that she was not 
there ! A parting that never broke the 
bodily presence — that was the form of 
agony which the infinite moment as- 
sumed. As to the possibility she would 
bribe him with, was it not even the prom- 
ise of a glimpse of Abraham’s bosom 
from the heart of hell? With such an 
effort as breaks the bonds of a night- 
mare dream, he turned from her, and, 
heedless of her recall, went slowly, stead- 
ily out of the house. 

While she was talking his eyes had 
been resting with glassy gaze upon the 
far-off waters : the moment he stepped 
into the open air and felt the wind on 
his face he knew that their turmoil was 
the travailing of sympathy, and that the 
ocean had been drawing him all the 
time. He walked straight to his little 
boat, lying dead on the sands of the har- 
bor, launched it alive on the smooth wa- 
ter within the piers, rove his halliard, 
stepped his mast, hoisted a few inches 
of sail, pulled beyond the sheltering sea- 
walls, and was tossing amidst the torn 
waters whose jagged edges were twisted 
in the loose-flying threads of the north- 
ern gale. A moment more and he was 
sitting on the windward gunwale of his 
spoon of a boat, with the tiller in one 
hand and the sheet in the other, as she 
danced like a cork over the broken tops 
of the waves. For help in his sore need 
instinct had led him to danger. 


208 


MALCOLM. 


Halfway to the point of Scaurnose he 
came round on the other tack and stood 
for the Death Head. 

Glancing from the wallowing floor be- 
neath him, and the one wing that bore 
him skimming over its million deaths, 
away to the House of Lossie, where it 
stood steady in its woods, he distin- 
guished the very window whence, hard- 
ly an hour ago, from the centre of the 
calm companionship of books, he had 
gazed out upon the wind-swept waste as 
upon a dream. 

‘‘How strange,” he thought, ‘‘to find 
myself now in the midst of what I then 
but saw ! This reeling ocean was but 
a picture to me then — a picture framed 
in the window : it is now alive and I 
toss like a toy on its wild commotion. 
Then I but saw from afar the flashing of 
the white out of the blue water, and the 
blue sky overhead, which no winds can 
rend into pallid pains : now I have to 
keep eye and hand together in one con- 
sent to shun death. I meet wind and 
wave on their own terms, and humor 
the one into an evasion of the other. 
The wind that then revealed itself only 
in white blots and streaks now lashes my 
hair into my eyes, and only the lift of my 
bows is betwixt me and the throat that 
swallows the whales and the krakens. 

‘‘Will it be so with death? It looks 
strange and far off now, but it draws 
nigh noiselessly, and one day I shall meet 
it face to face in the grapple : shall I re- 
joice in that wrestle as I rejoice in this ? 
Will not my heart grow sick within me ? 
Shall I not be faint and fearful? And 
yet I could almost wish it were at hand ! 

” I wonder how death and this wan 
water here look to God ? To Him is it 
like a dream, a picture ? Water cannot 
wet Him, death cannot touch Him. Yet 
Jesus could have let the water wet Him, 
and He granted power to death when 
He bowed His head and gave up the 
ghost. God knows how things look to 
us both far off and near : He also can see 
them so when He pleases. What they 
look to Him is what they are : we can- 
not see them so, but we see them as He 
meant us to see them — therefore truly, 
according to the measure of the created. 


Made in the image of God, we see things 
in the image of His sight.” 

Thoughts like these, only in yet cruder 
forms, swept through the mind of Mal- 
colm as he tossed on that autumn sea. 
But what we call crude forms are often 
in reality germinal forms ; and one or 
other of these flowered at once into the 
practical conclusion that God must know 
all his trouble and would work for him 
a worthy peace. Ere he turned again 
toward the harbor he had reascended the 
cloud-haunted Pisgah whence the words 
of Lady Florimel had hurled him. 


CHAPTER L. 

LIZZY FINDLAY. 

Leaving his boat again on the dry 
sand that sloped steep into the harbor, 
Malcolm took his way homeward along 
the shore. Presently he spied, at some 
little distance in front of him, a woman 
sitting on the sand, with her head bowed 
upon her knees. She had no shawl, 
though the wind was cold and strong, 
blowing her hair about wildly. Her at- 
titude and whole appearance were the 
very picture of misery. He drew near, 
and recognized her. ‘‘What on earth’s 
gane wrang wi’ ye, Lizzy ?” he asked. 

‘‘Ow, naething,” she murmured with- 
out lifting her head. The brief reply 
was broken by a sob. 

‘‘That canna be,” persisted Malcolm, 
trouble of whose own had never yet 
rendered him indifferent to that of an- 
other. ” Is ’t onything ’at a body cud 
Stan’ by ye in ?” 

Another sob was the only answer. 

‘‘ I’m in a peck o’ troubles mysel’,” 
said Malcolm : ‘‘ I wad fain help a body 
gien I cud.” 

‘‘Naebody can help me,” returned the 
girl with an agonized burst, as if the 
words were driven from her by a con- 
vulsion of her inner world, and there- 
with she gave way, weeping and sob- 
bing aloud. ” I doobt I’ll hae to droon 
mysel’,” she added with a wail, as he 
stood in compassionate silence until the 
gust should blow over ; and as she said 
it she lifted a face tear-stained and all 


MALCOLM. 


white save where five fingers had brand- 
ed their shapes in red. Her eyes scarce- 
ly encountered his : again she buried her 
face in her hands and rocked herself to 
and fro, moaning in fresh agony. 

“Yer mither’s been sair upo’ ye, I 
doobt,” he said. “But it’ll sune blaw 
ower. She cuils as fest ’s she heats.” 
As he spoke he sat himself down on the 
sand beside her. 

But Lizzy started to her feet, crying, 
“Dinna come near me, Ma’colm. I’m 
no fit for honest man to come nigh me. 
Stan’ awa’ ! I hae the plague.” • 

She laughed, but it was a pitiful laugh, 
and she looked wildly about, as if for 
some place to run to. 

“I wad na be sorry to tak it mysel’, 
Lizzy. At ony rate. I’m ower auld a 
freen’ to be driven frae ye that gait,” 
said Malcolm, who could not bear the 
thought of leaving her on the border of 
the solitary sea, with the waves barking 
at her all the cold winterly gloaming. 
Who could tell what she might do after 
the dark came down ? 

He rose, and would have taken her 
hand to draw it from her face, but she 
turned her back quickly, saying in a 
hard, forced voice, “A man canna help 
a wuman, ’cep it be till her grave.” 
Then turning suddenly she laid her 
hands on his shoulders and cried, “ For 
the love o’ God, Ma’colm, lea’ me this 
moment ! Gien I cud tell ony man what 
ailed me, I wad tell you ; but I canna, 
I canna ! Rin, laddie — rin’ an’ lea’ me.'’ 

It was impossible to resist her anguish- 
ed entreaty and agonized look. Sore at 
heart and puzzled in brain, Malcolm 
yielding turned from her, and with eyes 
on the ground thoughtfully pursued his 
slow walk toward the Seaton. 

At the corner of the first house in the 
village stood three women, whom he 
saluted as he passed. The tone of their 
reply struck him a little, but not having 
observed how they watched him as he 
approached, he presently forgot it. The 
moment his back was turned to them, 
they turned to each other and inter- 
changed looks. 

“Fine feathers mak fine birds,” said 
one of them. 

14 


209 

“Ay, but he luiks booed doon,” said 
another. 

“ An’ weel he may. What’ll his leddy- 
mither say to sic a ploy ? She’ll no saw- 
vor bein’ made a granny o’ efter sic a 
fashion ’s yon,” said the third. 

“ ’Deed, lass, there’s few oucht to think 
less o’ ’t,” returned the first. 

Although they took little pains to low- 
er their voices, Malcolm was far too 
much preoccupied to hear what they 
said. Perceiving plainly enough that 
the girl’s trouble was much greater than 
a passing quarrel with her mother would 
account for, and knowing that any inter- 
cession on his part would only rouse to 
loftier flames the coal-pits of maternal 
wrath, he resolved at length to take 
counsel with Blue Peter and his wife, 
and therefore, passing the sea-gate, con- 
tinued his walk along the shore and up 
the red path to the village of Scaurnose. 

He found them sitting at their after- 
noon meal of tea and oatcake. A peat 
fire smouldered hot upon the hearth ; a 
large kettle hung from a chain over it 
— fountain of plenty whence the great 
china teapot, splendid in red flowers and 
green leaves, had just been filled ; the 
mantelpiece was crowded with the gayest 
of crockery, including the never-absent 
half- shaved poodles and the rarer Goth- 
ic castle, from the topmost story of whose 
keep bloomed a few late autumn flowers. 
Phemy too was at the table : she rose 
as if to leave the room, but apparently 
changed her mind, for she sat down 
again instantly. 

“Man, ye’re unco braw the day — i’ 
yer kilt an’ tartan hose !” remarked 
Mair as he welcomed him. 

“ I pat them on to please my daddy 
an’ the markis,” said Malcolm, with a 
half-shamefaced laugh. 

“Are na ye some cauld aboot the 
k-nees?” asked the guid wife. 

“ Nae that cauld I ken ’at they’re 
there, but I’ll sune be used till ’t.” 

“Weel, sit ye doon an’ tak a cup o’ 
tay wi’ ’s.” 

“I haena muckle time to spare,” said 
Malcolm, “but I’ll tak a cup o’ tay wi’ 
ye. Gien ’t warna for wee bit luggies 
[small ears), I wad fain speir yer advice 


210 


MALCOLM. 


aboot ane ’at wants a wiiman-freen’, I’m 
thinkin’.” 

Phemy, who had been regarding him 
with compressed lips and suspended op- 
erations, deposited her bread and but- 
ter on the table and slipped from her 
chair. 

“Whaur are ye gauin’, Phemy?” said 
her mother. 

‘‘Takin’ awa’ my lugs,” returned 
Phemy. 

‘‘Ye cratur!” exclaimed Malcolm; 
‘‘ ye’re ower wise. Wha wad hae thoucht 
ye sae gleg at the uptak ?” 

‘‘Whan fowk winna lippen to me — ” 
said Phemy, and ceased. 

‘‘What can ye expect,” returned Mal- 
colm, while father and mother listened 
with amused faces, ‘‘whan ye winna lip- 
pen to fowk ? Phemy, whaur’s the mad 
laird ?” 

A light flush rose to her cheeks, but 
whether from embarrassment or anger 
could not be told from her reply. ‘‘ I ken 
nane o’ that name,” she said. 

‘‘Whaur’s the laird o’ Kirkbyres, 
than ?” 

‘‘Whaur ye s’ never lay han’ upo’ 
’im,” returned the child, her cheeks now 
I rosy red and her eyes flashing. 

*'Me lay han’ upo’ ’im !” cried Mal- 
.colm, surprised at her behavior. 

‘‘ Gien ’t hadna been for you naebody 
>wad hae fun’ oot the w’y intil the cave,” 
•she rejoined, her gray eyes, blue with 
ithe fire of anger, looking straight into 
this. 

‘‘Phemy! Phemy!” said he;* mother, 
“for shame !” 

“ There’s nae shame intill ’t,” protest- 
ed the child indignantly. 


‘‘But there is shame intill ’t,” said 
Malcolm quietly, ‘‘for ye wrang an hon- 
est man.” 

‘‘Weel, ye canna deny,” persisted 
Phemy, in mood to brave the Evil One 
himself, ‘‘ ’at ye was ower at Kirkbyres 
on ane o’ the markis’s mears, an’ heild 
a lang confab wi’ the laird’s mither.” 

‘‘I gaed upo’ my maister’s eeran’,” 
answered Malcolm. 

‘‘Ow, ay ! I daur say! But wha kens, 
wi’ sic a mither ?” 

She burst out crying and ran into the 
street. Malcolm understood it now. 
‘‘She’s like a’ the lave [rest]," he said 
sadly, turning to her mother. 

“I’m jist affrontit wi’ the bairn,” she 
replied, with manifest annoyance in her 
flushed face. 

‘‘She’s true to him," said Malcolm, 
‘‘gien she binna fair to me. Sayna a 
word to the lassie. She’ll ken me bet- 
ter er lang. An’ noo for my story.” 

Mrs. Mair said nothing while he told 
how he had come upon Lizzy, the state 
she was in, and what had passed be- 
tween them ; but he had scarcely finish- 
ed when she rose, leaving a cup of tea 
untasted, and took her bonnet and shawl 
from a nail in the back of the door. Her 
husband rose also. ‘‘ I’ll jist gang as 
far’s the Boar’s Craig wi’ ye mysel’, 
Annie,” he said. 

‘‘ I’m thinkin’ ye’ll fin’ the puir lassie 
whaur I left her,” remarked Malcolm. 
‘‘ I doobt she daured na gang hame.” 

That night it was all over the town 
that Lizzy Findlay was in a woman’s 
worst trouble, and that Malcolm was the 
cause of it. 





CHAPTER LI. 

THE laird’s burrow. 

A nnie MAIR had a brother, a car- 
penter, who, following her to Scaur- 
nose, had there rented a small building 
next dpor to her cottage, and made of 
it a workshop. It had a rude loft, one 
end of which was loosely floored, while 
the remaining part showed the couples 
through the bare joists, except where 
some planks of oak and mahogany, with 
an old door, a boat’s rudder and other 
things that might come in handy, were 
laid across them in store. There also 
during the winter hung the cumulus- 
clouds of Blue Peter’s herring-nets, for 
his cottage, having a garret above, did 
not afford the customary place for them 
in the roof. 

When the cave proved to be no longer 
a secret from the laird’s enemies, Phemy, 
knowing that her father’s garret could 
never afford him a sufficing sense of se- 
curity, turned the matter over in her ac- 
tive little brain until pondering produced 
plans, and she betook herself to her un- 
cle, with whom she was a great favor- 
ite. Him she found no difficulty in per- 
suading to grant the hunted man a refuge 
in the loft. In a few days he had put up 
a partition between the part which was 
floored and that which was open, and so 
made for him a little room, accessible 
from the shop by a ladder and a trap- 
door. He had just taken down an old 
window-frame to glaze for it, when the 
laird, coming in and seeing what he was 
about, scrambled up the ladder, and a 
moment after all but tumbled down again 
in his eagerness to put a stop to it : the 
window was in the gable, looking to the 
south, and he would not have it glazed. 

In blessed compensation for much of 
the misery of his lot the laird was gifted 
with an inborn delicate delight in Nature 
and her ministrations such as few poets 
even possess ; and this faculty was sup- 


plemented with a physical hardiness 
which, in association with his weakness 
and liability to certain appalling attacks, 
was truly astonishing. Though a rough 
hand might cause him exquisite pain, he 
could sleep soundly on the hardest floor; 
a hot room would induce a fit, but he 
would lie under an open window in the 
sharpest night without injury; a rude 
word would make him droop like a flow- 
er in frost, but he might go all day wet 
to the skin without taking cold. To all 
kinds of what are called hardships he had 
readily become inured, without which it 
would have been impossible for his love 
of Nature to receive such a full develop- 
ment. For hence he grew capable of com- 
munion with her in all her moods, un- 
disabled either by the deadening effects 
of present or the aversion consequent on 
past suffering. All the range of earth’s 
shows, from the grandeurs of sunrise or 
thunderstorm down to the soft’unfolding 
of a daisy or the babbling birth of a 
spring, was to him an open book. It is 
true, the delight, of these things was con- 
stantly mingled with — not unfrequently 
broken, indeed, by — the troublous ques- 
tion of his origin, but it was only on oc- 
casions of jarring contact with his fellows 
that it was accompanied by such agonies 
as my story has represented. Sometimes 
he would sit on a rock murmuring the 
words over and over, and dabbling his 
bare feet, small and delicately formed, in 
the translucent green of a tide-abandon- 
ed pool. But oftener in a soft dusky 
wind he might have been heard uttering 
them gently and coaxingly, as if he 
would wile from the evening zephyr the '■ 
secret of his birth ; which surely Mother 
Nature must know. The confinement 
of such a man would have been in the 
highest degree cruel, and inust speedily 
have ended in death. Even Malcolm did 
not know how absolute was the laird’s 
need, not simply of air and freedom, but 


212 


MALCOLM. 


of all things accompanying the enjoy- 
ment of them. 

There was nothing, then, of insanity 
in his preference of a windowless bed- 
room : it was that airs and odors, birds 
and sunlight, the sound of flapping wing, 
of breaking wave and quivering throat, 
might be free to enter. Cool clean air 
he must breathe or die : with that, the 
partial confinement to which he was sub- 
jected was not unendurable; besides, 
the welcome rain would then visit him 
sometimes, alighting from the slant wing 
of the flying blast, while the sun would 
pour in his rays full and mighty and 
generous, unsifted by the presumptuous 
glass — green and gray and crowded with 
distorting lines — and the sharp flap of 
pigeon’s wing would be mimic thunder 
to the flash which leapt from its white- 
ness as it shot by. 

He not only loved but understood all 
the creatures, divining, by an operation 
in which neither the sympathy nor the 
watchfulness was the less perfect that 
both were but half conscious, the emo- 
tions and desires informing their inarticu- 
late language. Many of them seemed to 
know him in return — either recognizing 
his person and from experience dedu- 
cing safety, or reading his countenance 
sufficiently to perceive that his interest 
prognosticated no injury. The maternal 
bird would keep her seat in her nursery 
and give back his gaze ; the rabbit peep- 
ing from his burrow would not even draw 
in his head at his approach ; the rooks 
about Scaurnose never took to their wings 
until he was within a yard or two of 
them : the laird, in his half-acted utter- 
ance, indicated that they took him for a 
scarecrow, and therefore were not afraid 
of him. Even Mrs. Catanach’s cur had 
never offered him a bite in return for a 
caress. He could make a bird’s nest 
of any sort common in the neighbor- 
hood, so as to deceive the most cunning 
of the nest-harrying youths of the parish. 

Hardly was he an hour in his new 
abode ere the sparrows and robins began 
to visit him. Even strange birds of pas- 
sage flying in at his hospitable window 
would espy him unscared, and some- 
times partake of the food he had always 


at hand to offer them. He relied, in- 
deed, for the pleasures of social inter- 
course with the animal world on stray 
visits alone : he had no pets — dog nor 
cat nor bird — for his wandering and 
danger-haunted life did not allow such 
companionship. 

He insisted on occupying his new 
quarters at once. In vain Phemy and 
her uncle showed reason against it. He 
did not want a bed : he much preferred 
a heap of sfales — that is, wood-shavings. 
Indeed, he would not have a bed, and 
whatever he did want he would get for 
himself. Having by word and gesture 
made this much plain, he suddenly dart- 
ed up the ladder, threw down the trap- 
door, and, lo ! like a hermit-crab he had 
taken possession. Wisely they left him 
alone. 

For a full fortnight he allowed neither 
to enter the little chamber. As often as 
they called him he answered cheerfully, 
but never showed himself except when 
Phemy brought him food, which, at his 
urgent request, was only once in the 
twenty-four hours — after nightfall, the 
last thing before she went to bed : then 
he would slide down the ladder, take 
what she had brought him and hurry 
up again. Phemy was perplexed, and at 
last a good deal distressed, for he had 
always been glad of her company before. 

At length one day, hearing her voice 
in the shop, and having peeped through 
a hole in the floor to see that no stranger 
was present, he invited her to go up, and 
lifted the trap-door. “ Come, come,” he 
said hurriedly when her head appeared 
and came no farther. 

He stood holding the trap-door, eager 
to close it again as soon as she should 
step clear of it, and surprise was retard- 
ing her ascent. 

Before hearing his mind the carpenter 
had already made for him, by way of 
bedstead, a simple frame of wood, cross- 
ed with laths in the form of lattice- work : 
this the laird had taken and set up on its 
side opposite the window, about two feet 
from it, so that, with abundant passage 
for air, it served as a screen. Fixing it 
firmly to the floor, he had placed on the 
top of it a large pot of the favorite cot- 


MALCOLM. 


213 


tage-plant there called humility, and 
trained its long pendent runners over it. 
On the floor between it and the window 
he had ranged a row of flower-pots — one 
of them with an ivy-plant, which also he 
had begun to train against the trellis — 
and already the humility and the ivy 
had begun to intermingle. 

At one side of the room, where the 
sloping roof met the floor, was his bed 
of fresh pine shavings, amongst which, 
their resinous, half-aromatic odor appar- 
ently not sweet enough to content him, 
he had scattered a quantity of dried rose- 
leaves. A thick tartan plaid for sole cov- 
ering lay upon the heap. 

“ I wad hae likit hay better,” he said, 
pointing to this lair rather than couch, 
“but it’s some ill to get, an’ the spales 
are at han’, an’ they smell unco clean.” 

At the opposite side of the room lay a 
correspondent heap, differing not a little, 
however, in appearance and suggestion. 
As far as visible form and material could 
make it one it was a grave — rather a 
short one, but abundantly long for the 
^ laird. It was in reality a heap of mould, 
about a foot and a half high, covered 
with the most delicate grass and be- 
spangled with daisies. 

“ Laird,” said Phemy half reproach- 
fully as she stood gazing at the marvel, 
“ye hae been oot at nicht!” 

“Ay — a’ nicht whiles, whan naebody 
was aboot ’cep’ the win’ ” — he pro- 
nounced the word with a long-drawn, 
imitative sough — ^“an’ the cloods an’ the 
splash o’ the watter.” 

Pining under the closer imprisonment 
in his garret which the discovery of his 
subterranean refuge had brought upon 
him, the laird would often' have made 
his escape at night but for the fear of 
disturbing the Mairs ; and now that there 
was no one to disturb, the temptation to 
spend his nights in the open air was the 
more irresistible that he had conceived 
the notion of enticing Nature herself 
into his very chamber. Abroad, then, 
he 'had gone as soon as the first mid- 
night closed around his new dwelling, 
and in the fields had with careful dis- 
crimination begun to collect the mould 
for his mound, a handful here and a 


handful there. This took him several 
nights, and when it was finished he was 
yet more choice in his selection of turf, 
taking it from the natural grass growing 
along the roads and on the earthen 
dykes or walls, the outer sides of which 
feed the portionless cows of that country. 
Searching for miles in the moonlight, he 
had, with eye and hand, chosen out 
patches of this grass, the shortest and 
thickest he could find, and with a pock- 
et-knife, often in pieces of only a few 
inches, removed the best of it and car- 
ried it home, to be fitted on the heap, 
and with every ministration and bland- 
ishment enticed to flourish. He pressed 
it down with soft firm hands, and be- 
showered it with water first warmed a 
little in his mouth ; when the air was 
soft he guided the wind to blow upon it ; 
and as the sun could not reach it where 
it lay, he gathered a marvelous heap of 
all the bright sherds he could find — of 
crockery and glass and mirror — so ar- 
ranging them in the window that each 
threw its tiny reflex upon the turf. With 
this last contrivance Phemy was special- 
ly delighted, and the laird, happy as a 
child in beholding her delight, threw 
himself in an ecstasy on the mound and 
clasped it in his arms. I can hardly 
doubt that he regarded it as representing 
his own grave, to which in his happier 
moods he certainly looked forward as a 
place of final and impregnable refuge. 

As he lay thus, foreshadowing his 
burial — or rather his resurrection — a 
young canary which had flown from one 
of the cottages flitted in with a golden 
shiver and flash, and alighted on his 
head. He took it gently in his hand 
and committed it to Phemy to carry 
home, with many injunctions against 
disclosing how it had been captured. 

His lonely days were spent in sleep, 
in tending his plants or in contriving 
defences, but in all weathers he wander- 
ed out at midnight, and roamed or rested 
among fields or rocks till the first signs 
of the breaking day, when he hurried 
like a wild creature to his den. 

Before long he had contrived an in- 
genious trap, or man-spider web, for the 
catching of any human insect that might 


214 


MALCOLM. 


seek entrance at his window: the mo- 
ment the invading body should reach a 
certain point a number of lines would 
drop all about him, making his way 
through which he would straightway be 
caught by the barbs of countless fish- 
hooks ; the whole strong enough at least 
to detain him until its inventor should 
have opened the trap-door and fled. 


CHAPTER Lll. 

CREAM OR SCUM? 

Of the new evil report abroad con- 
cerning him nothing had as yet reached 
Malcolm. He read and pondered, and 
wrestled with difficulties of every kind ; 
saw only a little of Lady Florimel, who, 
he thought, avoided him; saw less of 
the marquis ; and, as the evenings grew 
longer, spent still larger portions of them 
with Duncan — now qnd then reading to 
him, but oftener listening to his music or 
taking a lesson in the piper’s art. He 
went seldom into the Seaton, for the 
faces there were changed toward him. 
Attributing this to the reports concern- 
ing his parentage, and not seeing why he 
should receive such treatment because of 
them, hateful though they might well be 
to himself, he began to feel some bitter- 
ness toward his early world, and would 
now and then repeat to himself a misan- 
thropical thing he had read, fancying he 
too had come to that conclusion. But 
there was not much danger of such a 
mood growing habitual with one who 
knew Duncan MacPhail, Blue Peter and 
the schoolmaster, not to mention Miss 
Horn. To know one person who is pos- 
itively to be trusted will do more for a 
man’s moral nature — yes, for his spiritual 
nature — than all the sermons he has ever 
heard or ever can hear. 

One evening Malcolm thought he 
would pay Joseph a visit, but when he 
reached Scaurnose he found it nearly 
deserted : he had forgotten that this was 
one of the nights of meeting in the Bail- 
lies’ Barn. Phemy, indeed, had not gone 
with her father and mother, but she was 
spending the evening with the mad laird. 
Lifting the latch, and seeing no one in 


the house, he was on the point of with- 
drawing when he caught sight of an eye 
peeping through an inch opening of the 
door of the bed-closet, which the same 
moment was hurriedly closed. He call- 
ed, but received no reply, and left the 
cottage wondering. He had not heard 
that Mrs. Mair had given Lizzy Findlay 
shelter for a season, ^nd now a neigh- 
bor had observed and put her own con- 
struction on the visit, her report of which 
strengthened the general conviction of 
his unworthiness. 

Descending from the promontory and 
wandering slowly along the shore, he 
met the Scaurnose part of the congrega- 
tion returning home. The few salutations 
dropped him as he passed were distant 
and bore an expression of disapproval. 
Mrs. Mair only, who was walking with 
a friend, gave him a kind nod. 

Blue Peter, who followed at a little 
distance, turned and walked back with 
him. “I’m exerceesed i’ my min’,’’ he 
said as soon as they were clear of the 
stragglers, “aboot the turn things hae 
taen doon-by at the Barn.’’ 

“ They tell me there’s some gey queer 
customers taen to haudin’ furth,’’ return- 
ed Malcolm. 

“It’s a fac’,’’ answered Peter. “The 
fowk ’ll hardly hear a word noo frae ony 
o’ the aulder an’ soberer Christi-ans. 
They haena the gift o’ the Speerit, they 
say. But in place o’ sterrin’ them up to 
tak hold upo’ their Maker, their new 
lichts set them up to luik doon upo’ ither 
fowk, propheseein’ an’ denuncin’ as gien 
the Lord had committit jeedgment into 
their ban’s.’’ 

“What is ’t they tak baud o’ to misca’ 
them for?’’ asked Malcolm. 

“ It’s no sae muckle,’’ answered Peter, 
“for onything they du, as for what they 
believe or dinna believe. There’s an 
’uman frae Clamrock was o’ their pairty 
the nicht. She stude up an’ spak weel, 
an’ weel oot, but no to muckle profit, as 
’t seemed to me ; only I’m maybe no a 
fair jeedge, for I cudna be rid o’ the no- 
tion ’at she was lattin’ at mysel’ a’ the 
time : I dinna ken what for. An’ I chd- 
na help wonnerin’ gien she kent’what 
fowk used to say aboot hersel’ wharr she 


MALCOLM, 


was a lass ; for gien the sma’ half o’ that 
was true, a body micht think the new 
grace gien her wad hae driven her to 
hide her head, i’ place o’ exaltin’ her 
horn on high. But maybe it was a’ 
lees : she kens best hersel’.” 

" There canna be muckle worship gae- 
in’ on wi’ ye by this time, than. I’m 
thinkin’,” said Malcolm. 

“ I dinna like to say ’t,” returned Jo- 
seph ; “ but there’s a speerit o’ speerit- 
ooal pride abroad amang ’s, it seems 
to me, ’at ’s no fawvorable to devotion. 
They hae taen ’t intill their heids, for ae 
thing — an that’s what Dilse’s Bess lays 
on at — ’at ’cause they’re fisher-fowk they 
hae a speecial mission to convert the 
warl’.” 

“What foon’ they that upo’ ?’’ asked 
Malcolm. 

“Ow, what the Saviour said to Peter 
an’ the lave o’ them, ’at was fishers — to 
come wi’ Him an’ He wad mak them 
fishers o’ men.’’ 

"Ay, I see. What for dinna ye bide at 
hame, you an’ the lave o’ the douce anes ?’’ 

“ There ye come upo’ the thing ’at ’s 
troublin’ me. Are we ’at begude it to 
brak it up ? Or are we to stan’ aside 
an’ lat it a’ gang to dirt an’ green bree ? 
Or are we to bide wi’ them an’ warsle 
aboot holy words till we tyne a’ stamach 
for holy things ?’’ 

. “Cud ye brak it up gien ye tried?’’ 
asked Malcolm. 

“ I doobt no. That’s ane o’ the con- 
siderations ’at hings some sair upo’ me : 
see what we hae dune !’’ 

“ What for dinna ye gang ower to Mais- 
ter Graham an’ speir what he thinks ?’’ 

“ What for sud I gang till him ? What 
’s he but a fine moaral man? I never 
h’ard ’at he had ony discernment o’ the 
min’ o’ the Speerit.’’ 

“ That’s what Dilse’s Bess frae Clam- 
rock wad say aboot yersel’, Peter.’’ 

“An’ I doobt she wadna be far wrang.’’ 

“Ony gait, she kens nae mair aboot 
you nor ye ken aboot the maister. Ca’ 
ye a man wha cares for naething in 
h’aven or in earth but the wull o’ ’s 
Creator — ca’ ye sic a man no speeritual ? 
Jist gang ye till ’im, an’ maybe he’ll lat 
in a glent upo’ ye ’at ’ll astonish ye.” 


215 

“ He’s taen unco little enterest in ony- 
thing ’at was gaein’ on.” 

“Arena ye some wissin’ ye hadna taen 
muckle mair yersel’, Peter?” 

“’Deed am I! But gien he be giftit 
like that ye say, what for didna he try 
to haud ’s richt ?” 

“ Maybe he thoucht ye wad mak yer 
mistaks better wantin’ him,” 

“ Weel, ye dinna ca’ that freenly ?” 

“What for no? I hae h’ard him say 
fowk canna come richt ’cep’ by haein’ 
room to gang wrang. But jist ye gang 
till him noo : maybe he’ll open mair een 
i’ yer heids nor ye kent ye had.” 

“Weel, maybe we micht du waur. I 
s’ mention the thing to Bow-o’-meal an’ 
Jeames Gentle, an’ see what they say. 
There’s nae guid to be gotten o’ gaein’ 
to the minister, ye see : there’s naething 
in him, as the saw says, but what the 
spune pits intill him.” 

With this somewhat unfavorable re- 
mark Blue Peter turned homeward. 
Malcolm went slowly back to his room, 
his tallow candle and his volume of 
Gibbon. 

He read far into the night, and his 
candle was burning low in the socket. 
Suddenly he sat straight up in his chair, 
listening : he thought he heard a sound 
in the next room — it was impossible even 
to imagine of what, it was such a mere 
abstraction of sound. He listened with 
every nerve, but heard nothing more ; 
crept to the door of the wizard’s cham- 
ber and listened again ; listened until he 
could no longer tell whether he heard or 
not, and felt like a deaf man imagining 
sounds; then crept back to his 'own 
room and went to bed — all but satisfied 
that if it was anything it must have been 
some shaking window or door he had 
heard. 

But he could not get rid of the notion 
that he had smelt sulphur. 


CHAPTER LIII. 

THE schoolmaster’s COTTAGE. 

The following night three of the- 
Scaurnose fishermen — Blue Peter, Bow- 
o’-meal and Jeames Gentle — called at 


2i6 


MALCOLM. 


the schoolmaster’s cottage in the Alton, 
and were soon deep in earnest conver- 
sation with him around his peat-fire in 
the room which served him for study, 
dining-room and bed-chamber. All the 
summer a honeysuckle outside watched 
his back window 'for him; now it was 
guarded within by a few flowerless plants. 
It was a deep little window in a thick 
wall, with an air of mystery, as if thence 
the privileged might look into some 
region of strange and precious things. 
The front window was comparatively 
commonplace, with a white muslin cur- 
tain across the lower half. In the mid- 
dle of the sanded floor stood a table of 
white deal much stained with ink. The 
green-painted doors of the box-bed op- 
posite the hearth stood open, revealing 
a spotless white counterpane. On the 
wall beside the front window hung by 
red cords three shelves of books, and 
near the back window stood a dark old- 
fashioned bureau, with pendent brass 
handles as bright as new, supporting a 
bookcase with glass doors crowded with 
well-worn bindings. A few deal chairs 
completed the furniture. 

" It’s a sair vex, sir, to think o’ what 
we a’ jeedged to be the wark o’ the 
Speerit takin’ sic a turn. I’m feart it ’ll 
lie heavy at oor door,” said Blue Peter 
after a sketch of the state of affairs. 

” I don’t think they can have sunk so 
low as the early Corinthian church yet,” 
said Mr. Graham, “and Saint Paul never 
seems to have blamed himself for preach- 
ing the gospel to the Corinthians.” 

“Weel, maybe,” rejoined Mair. “But, 
meantime, the practical p’int is. Are we 
■;to tyauve [struggle] to set things richt 
.again, or are we to lea’ them to their ain 
• devices?” 

“What power have you to set things 
1 right ?” 

“Nane, sir. The Baillies’ Barn ’s as 
free to them as to oorsel’s.” 

“What influence have you, then ?” 

“Unco little,” said Bow-o’-meal, taking 
the word. “They’re afore the win’. An’ 
it’s plain eneuch ’at to stan’ up an’ op- 
pose them wad be but to breed strife an’ 
debate.” 

“An’ that micht put mony a waukent 


conscience soon’ asleep again — maybe 
no to be waukent ony mair,” said Blue 
Peter. 

“Then you don’t think you can either 
communicate or receive benefit by con- 
tinuing to take a part in those meet- 
ings ?” 

“We dinna think it,” answered all 
three. 

“ Then the natural question is, ‘ Why 
should you go ?’ ” 

“We’re feart for the guilt o’ what the 
minister ca’s shism,” said Blue Peter. 

“ That might have occurred to you be- 
fore you forsook the parish church,” said 
the schoolmaster with a smile. 

“ But there was nae speeritooal noorish- 
ment to be gotten i’ that houff [haunt]-' 
said Jeames Gentle. 

“How did you come to know the want 
of it?” 

“Ow, that cam fra the Speerit himseP 
— what else?” replied Gentle. 

“ By what means ?” 

“By the readin’ o’ the word an’ by 
prayer,” answered Gentle. 

“ By His ain v’ice i’ the hert,” said Bow- 
o’-meal. 

“Then a public assembly is not neces- 
sary for the communication of the gifts 
of the Spirit?’ 

They were silent. 

“Isn’t it possible that the eagerness 
after such assemblies may have some- 
thing to do with a want of confidence in 
what the Lord says of his kingdom — that 
it spreads like the hidden leaven, grows 
like the buried seed ? My own convic- 
tion is, that if a man would but bend his 
energies to live, if he would but try to 
be a true — that is, a godlike — man in all 
his dealings with his fellows, a genuine 
neighbor and not a selfish unit, he would 
open such channels for the flow of the 
Spirit as no amount of even honest and 
so-called successful preaching could.” 

“Wha but Ane was ever fit to lead sic 
a life ’s that ?” 

“All might be trying after it. In pro- 
portion as our candle burns it will give 
light. No talking about light will sup- 
ply the lack of its presence either to the 
talker or the listeners.” 

I “There’s a heap made o’ the preachin’ 


MALCOLM. 


217 


o’ the word i’ the buik itsel’,” said Peter 
with emphasis. 

“Undoubtedly. But just look at our 
Lord : He never stopped living amongst 
his people — hasn’t stopped yet ; but He 
often refused to preach, and personally 
has given it up altogether now.’’,. 

“Ay, but ye see He kent what He was 
duin’.’’ 

“And so will every man in proportion 
as he partakes of his Spirit.’’ 

“ But dinna ye believe there is sic a 
thing as gettin’ a call to the preachin’ ?’’ 

“I do ; but even then a man’s work is 
of worth only as it supplements his life. 
A network of spiritual fibres connects the 
''two, makes one of them.’’ 

“But surely, sir, them ’at ’s o’ the same 
min’ oucht to meet an’ stir ane anither 
up ? ‘ They that feart the Lord spak aften 
thegither,’ ye ken.’’ 

“What should prevent them? Why 
should not such as delight in each other’s 
society meet and talk and pray together 
— address each the others if they like ? 
There is plenty of opportunity for that, 
without forsaking the Church or calling 
public meetings. To continue your quo- 
tation — ‘ The Lord hearkened and heard :’ 
observe, the Lord is not here said to heark- 
en to sermons or prayers, but to the talk 
of his people. This would have saved 
you from false relations with men that 
oppose themselves, caring nothing for the 
truth — perhaps eager to save their souls, 
nothing more at the very best.’’ 

“Sir! sir! what wad ye hae ? Daur ye 
say it’s no a body’s first duty to save his 
ain sowl alive?’’ exclaimed Bow-o’-meal. 

“I daur’t, but there’s little daur in- 
till ’t,” said Mr. Graham, breaking into 
Scotch. 

Bow-o’-meal rose from his chair in in- 
dignation, Blue Peter made a grasp at 
his bonnet, and Jeames Gentle gave a 
loud sigh of commiseration. 

“ I allow it to be a very essential piece 
of prudence,’’ added the schoolmaster, 
resuming his quieter English, “but the 
first duty? — no. The Catechism might 
have taught you better than that. To 
mind his chief end must surely be man’s 
first duty, and the Catechism says, ‘ Man’s 
chief end is to glorify God.’ ’’ 


“And to enjoy him for ever,’’ supple- 
mented Peter. 

“That’s a safe consequence: there’s 
no fear of the second if he does the first. 
Any how, he cannot enjoy Him for ever 
this moment, and he can glorify Him at 
once.’’ 

“Ay, but hoo?’’ said Bow-o’-meal, 
ready to swoop upon the master’s reply. 

“Just as Jesus Christ did — by doing 
his will, by obedience.’’ 

“That’s no faith — it’s works! Ye’ll 
never save yer sowl that gait, sir.’’ 

“No man can ever save his soul : God 
only can do that. You can glorify Him 
by giving yourself up heart and soul and 
body and life to his Son. Then you 
shall be saved. That you must leave to 
Him, and do what He tells you. There 
will be no fear of the saving then, though 
it ’s not an easy matter — even for Him^ 
as has been sorely proved.” 

“An’ hoo are we to gie oorsel’s up till 
Him ? for ye see we’re practical kin’ o’ 
fowk, huz fisher-fowk, Maister Graham,” 
said Bow-o’-meal. The tone implied 
that the schoolmaster was not practical. 

“I say again, in doing his will and 
not your own.” 

“An’ what may his wull be ?” 

“ Is He not telling you himself at this 
moment? Do you not know what his 
will is ? How should / come between 
Him and you ! For anything I know, 
it may be that you pay your next-door 
neighbor a crown you owe him, or make 
an apology to the one on the other side, 
/do not know : you do.” 

“ Dinna ye think aboot savin’ yer ain 
sowl, noo, Maister Graham ?” said Bow- 
o’-meal, returning on their track. 

“ No, I don’t. I’ve forgotten all about 
that. I only desire and pray to do the 
will of my God, which is all in all to 
me.” 

“What say ye, than, aboot the sowls 
o’ ither fowk ? Wadna ye save them — 
no ?” 

“Gladly would I save them, but ac- 
cording to the will of God. If I were, 
even unwittingly, to attempt it in any 
other way, I should be casting stumbling- 
blocks in their path and separating my- 
self from my God — doing that which is 


2I8 


MALCOLM. 


not of faith, and therefore is sin. It is 
only where a man is at one with God 
that he can do the right thing or take 
the right way. Whatever springs from 
any other source than the Spirit that 
dwelt in Jesus is of sin, and works to 
thwart the Divine will. Who knows 
what harm may be done to a man by 
hurrying a spiritual process in him ?” 

“ I doobt, sir, gien your doctrine was 
to get a bearin’, there wad be unco little 
dune for the glory o’ God i’ this place,” 
remarked Bovv-o’-meal with sententious 
reproof. 

” But what was done would be of the 
right sort, and surpassingly powerful.” 

“Weel, to come back to the business 
in han’, what would be yer advice ?” 
said Bow-o’-meal. 

‘‘That’s a thing none but a lawyer 
should give. I have' shown you what 
seem to me the principles involved: I 
can do no more.” 

‘‘Ye dinna ca’ that neeborly, whan a 
body comes speirin’ ’t !” 

‘‘Are you prepared, then, to take my 
advice ?” 

‘‘Ye wadna hae a body du that afore- 
han’ ? We micht as weel a’ be papists 
an’ believe as we’re tauld.” 

‘‘Precisely so. But you can exercise 
your j udgment upon the principles where- 
on my opinion is founded, with far more 
benefit than upon my opinion itself; 
which I cannot well wish you to adopt, 
seeing I think it far better for a man to 
go wrong upon his own honest judgment 
than to go right upon anybody else’s 
judgment, however honest also.” 

‘‘Ye hae a heap o’ queer doctrines, sir.” 

‘‘And yet you ask advice of me ?” 

‘‘We haena ta’en muckle, ony gait,” 
returned Bow-o’-meal rudely, and walk- 
ed from the cottage. 

Jeames Gentle and Blue Peter bade 
the master a kindly good-night, and fol- 
lowed Bow-o’-meal. 

The next Sunday evening Blue Peter 
was again at the Alton, accompanied by 
Gentle and another fisherman, not Bow- 
o’-meal, and had another and longer con- 
versation with the schoolmaster. The 
following Sunday he went yet again, 
and from that time, every Sunday even- 


ing, as soon as he 'had had his tea, Blue 
Peter took down his broad bonnet and 
set out to visit Mr.- Graham. As he went, 
one and another would join him as he 
passed, the number increasing every 
time, until at last ten or twelve went 
regularly. 

But Mr. Graham did not like such a 
forsaking of wives and children on the 
Sunday. “ Why shouldn’t you bring Mrs. 
Mair with you ?” he said one evening, 
addressing Joseph first. Then turning 
to the rest, ‘‘ I should be happy to see 
any of your wives who can come,” he 
added; ‘‘and some of you have chil- 
dren who would be no trouble. If there 
is any good in gathering this way, why 
shoiildn’t we have those with us who are 
our best help at all other times ?” 

‘“Deed, sir,” said Joseph, ‘‘we’re sae 
used to oor wives ’at we’re ower ready 
to forget hoo ill we cud du wantin’ them.” 

Mrs. Mair and two other wives came 
the next night. A few hung back from 
modesty and dread of being catechised, 
but ere long about half a dozen went 
when they could. 

I need hardly say that Malcolm, as 
soon as he learned what was going on, 
made one of the company. And truly, 
although he did not know even yet all 
the evil that threatened him, he stood in 
heavy need of the support and comfort 
to be derived from such truths as Mr. 
Graham unfolded. Duncan also, al- 
though he took little interest in what 
passed, went sometimes, and was wel- 
comed. 

The talk of the master not unfrequent- 
ly lapsed into monologue, and some- 
times grew eloquent. Seized occasion- 
ally by the might of the thoughts which 
arose in him — thoughts which would, to 
him, have lost all their splendor as well 
as worth had he imagined them the off- 
spring of his own faculty, meteors of his 
own atmosphere, instead of phenomena 
of the heavenly region manifesting them- 
selves on the hollow side of the celestial 
sphere of human vision — he would break 
forth in grand poetic speech that roused to 
aspiration Malcolm’s whole being, while 
in the same instant calming him with the 
summer peace of profoundest faith. 


MALCOLM. 


219 


To no small proportion of his hearers 
some of such outbursts were altogether 
unintelligible — a matter of no moment 
— but there were of them who under- 
stood enough to misunderstand utterly : 
interpreting his riches by their poverty, 
they misinterpreted them pitifully, and 
misrepresented them worse. And, alas ! 
in the little company there "Were three or 
four men who, for all their upward im- 
pulses, yet remained capable of treach- 
ery, because incapable of recognizing 
the temptation to it for what it was. 
These by and by began to confer to- 
gether and form an opposition — in this 
at least ungenerous, that they continued 
to assemble at his house and show little 
token of dissension. When, however, 
they began at length to discover that the 
master did not teach that interpretation 
of atonement which they had derived 
they little knew whence, but delivered 
another as the doctrine of Saint Paul, 
Saint Peter and Saint John, they judged 
themselves bound to take measures to- 
ward the quenching of a dangerous 
heresy. For the more ignorant a man 
is, the more capable is he of being ab- 
solutely certain of many things — with 
such certainty, that is, as consists in the 
absence of doubt. Mr. Graham, in the 
mean time, full of love and quiet solemn 
fervor, placed completest confidence in 
their honesty and spoke his mind freely 
and faithfully. 


CHAPTER LIV. 

ONE DAY. 

The winter was close at hand — indeed 
in that northern region might already 
have claimed entire possession — but the 
trailing golden fringe of the skirts of 
Autumn was yet visible behind him as 
he wandered away down the slope of 
the world. In the gentle sadness of the 
season Malcolm could not help looking 
back with envy to the time when labor, 
adventure and danger, stormy winds 
and troubled waters, would have helped 
him to bear the weight of the moral at- 
mosphere which now from morning to 
night oppressed him.^ Since their last 
conversation Lady Florimel’s behavior 


to him was altered. She hardly ever 
sent for him now, and, when she did, 
gave her orders so distantly that at length, 
but for his grandfather’s sake, he could 
hardly have brought himself to remain 
in the house even until the return of his 
master, who was from home, and con- 
templated proposing to him as soon as 
he came back that he should leave his 
service and resume his former occupa- 
tion, at least until the return of summer 
should render it fit to launch the cutter 
again. 

One day, a little after noon, Malcolm 
stepped from the house. The morning 
had broken gray and squally, with fre- 
quent sharp showers, and had grown 
into a gurly, gusty day. Now and then 
the sun sent a dim yellow glint through 
the troubled atmosphere, but this was 
straightway swallowed up in the volumes 
of vapor seething and tumbling in the 
upper regions. As he crossed the thresh- 
old there came a moaning wind from the 
west, and the water-laden branches of 
the trees all went bending before it, 
shaking their burden of heavy drops on 
the ground. It was dreary, dreary, out- 
side and in. He turned and looked at 
the house. If he might have but one 
peep of the goddess far withdrawn ! 
What did he want of her ? Nothing but 
her favor — something acknowledged be- 
tween them — some understanding of ac- 
cepted worship. Alas ! it was all weak- 
ness, and the end thereof dismay. It 
was but the longing of the opium-eater 
or the drinker for the poison which in 
delight lays the foundations of torture. 
No : he knew where to find food — some- 
thing that was neither opium nor strong 
drink, something that in torture sustain- 
ed, and when its fruition came would, 
even in the splendors of delight, far sur- 
pass their» short-lived boon. He turned 
toward the schoolmaster’s cottage. 

Under the trees, which sighed aloud 
in the wind, and like earth-clouds rained 
upon him as he passed, across the church- 
yard, bare to the gray, hopeless-looking 
sky, through the iron gate he went, and 
opened the master’s outer door. Ere he 
reached that of his room he heard his 
voice inviting him to enter. 


220 


MALCOLM. 


“ Come to condole with me, Malcolm ?” 
said Mr. Graham cheerily. ^ 

“What for, sir?” asked Malcolm. 

“You haven’t heard, then, that I’m 
going to be sent about my business ? At 
least, it’s more than likely.” 

Malcolm dropped into a seat and 
stared like an idol. Could he have 
heard the words ? In his eyes Mr. Gra- 
ham was the man of the place — the r^al 
person of the parish. He dismissed! 
The words breathed of mingled impiety 
and absurdity. 

The schoolmaster burst out laughing 
at him. 

“ I’m feart to speyk, sir,” said Malcolm. 
“Whatever I say. I’m bun’ to mak a 
fule o’ mysel’. What, in plain words, 
div ye mean, sir?” 

“ Somebody has been accusing me of 
teaching heresy — in the school to my 
scholars, and in my own house to the 
fisher-folk : the presbytery has taken it 
up, and here is my summons to appear 
before them and answer to the charge.” 

“ Guid preserve ’s, sir ! An’ is this the 
first ye hae h’ard o’ ’t ?” 

“ The very first.” 

“An’ what are ye gaun’ to du ?” 

“Appear, of course.” 

“An’ what’ll ye say to them ?” 

“ I shall answer their questions.” 

“They’ll condemn ye.” 

“ I do not doubt it.” 

“An’ what neist ?” 

“ I shall have to leave Scotland, I sup- 
pose.” 

“Sir, it’s awfu’ !” 

The horror-stricken expression of Mal- 
colm’s face drew a second merry laugh 
from Mr. Graham. “They can’t burn 
me,” he said: “you needn’t look like 
that.” 

“ But there’s something terrible wrang, 
sir, whan sic men hae pooer ower sic a 
man.” 

“ They have no power but what’s given 
them. I shall accept their decision as 
the decree of Heaven.” 

“ It’s weel to be you, sir, ’at can tak a 
thing sae quaiet.” 

“You mustn’t suppose I am naturally 
so philosophical. It stands for five-and- 
forty years of the teaching of the Son 


of Man in this wonderful school of his, 
where the clever would be destroyed but 
for the stupid, where the Church would 
tear itself to pieces but for the laws of 
the world, and where the wicked them- 
selves are the greatest furtherance of 
godliness in the good.” 

“But wha ever cud hae been baze 
eneuch to du ’t?” said Malcolm, too 
much astounded for his usual eager at- 
tention to the words that fell from the 
master. 

“That I would rather not inquire,” 
answered Mr. Graham. “ In the mean 
time, it would be better if the friends 
would meet somewhere else, for this 
house is mine only in virtue of my office. 
Will you tell them so for me 

“ Surely, sir. But will ye no mak ane ?” 

“Not till this is settled. I will after, 
so long as I may be here.” 

“Gien onybody had been catecheesin’ 
the bairns, I wad surely hae h’ard o’ 
’t — ” said Malcolm, after a pause of 
rumination : “ Poochy wad hae tellt me. 
I saw him thestreen i^yester-even). Wha 
’ill ever say again a thing ’s no poas- 
sible ?” 

“Whatever doctrine I may have omit- 
ted to press in the school,” said Mr. Gra- 
ham, “ I have inculcated nothing at va- 
riance with the Confession of Faith or the 
Shorter Catechism.” 

“Hoo can ye say that, sir,” returned 
Malcolm, “whan, in as well ’s oot o’ the 
schuil, ye hae aye insistit ’at God ’s a just 
God — abune a’ thing likin’ to gie fair 
play 

“Well, does the Catechism say any- 
thing to the contrary?” 

“No in sae mony words, doobtless, but 
it says a sicht o’ things ’at wad mak God 
oot the maist oonrichteous tyrant ’at ever 
was.” 

“ I’m not sure you can show that logic- 
ally,” said Mr. Graham. “ I will think it 
over, however — not that I mean to take 
up any defence of myself. But now I 
have letters to write, and must ask you 
to leave me. Come and see me again 
to-morrow.” ^ 

Malcolm went from him 

like one that hath been stunned, 

And is of sense forlorn. 


MALCOLM. 


221 


Here was trouble upon trouble ! But 
what had befallen him compared with 
what had come upon the schoolmaster ? 
A man like him to be so treated ! How 
gladly he would work for him all the rest 
of his days ! and how welcome his grand- 
father would make him to his cottage! 
Lord Lossie would be the last to object. 
But he knew it was a baseless castle 
while he built it, for Mr. Graham would 
assuredly provide for himself, if it were 
by breaking stones on the road and say- 
ing the Lord’s Prayer. It all fell to pieces 
just as he lifted his hand to Miss Horn’s 
knocker. 

She received him with a cordiality such 
as even she had never shown him before. 
He told her what threatened Mr. Gra- 
ham. 

She heard him to the end without re- 
mark* beyond the interjection of an oc- 
casional “ Eh, sirs !” then sat for a min- 
ute in troubled silence. “There’s a heap 
o’ things an ’uman like me,’’ she said at 
length, “canna unnerstan’. I dinna ken 
whether some fowk mair nor preten’ to 
unnerstan’ them. But set Sandy Graham 
doon upo’ ae side, an’ the presbytery doon 
upo’ the ither, an’ I hae wit enuch to ken 
whilk I wad tak my eternal chance wi’. 
Some o’ the presbytery ’s guid eneuch 
men, but haena ower muckle gumption ; 
an’ some o’ them has plenty o’ gumption, 
but haena ower muckle grace, to jeedge 
by the w’y ’at they glower ’an rair, layin’ 
doon the law as gien the Almichty had 
been driven to tak coonsel wi’ them. But 
look at Sandy Graham ! Ye ken whether 
he has gumption or no ; an’ gien he be a 
stickit minister, he stack by the grace 
o’ moadesty. But, haith! I winna peety 
him, for, o’ a’ things, to peety a guid man 
i’ the richt gait is a fule’s^ folly. Troth I 
I’m a hantle mair concernt aboot yersel’, 
Ma’colm.’’ 

Malcolm heard her without apprehen- 
sion. His cup seemed full, and he never 
thought that cups sometimes run over. 
But perhaps he was so far the nearer to 
a truth : while the cup of blessing may 
and often does run over, I doubt if the 
cup of suffering is ever more than filled 
to the brim. 

“Onything fresh, mem?’’ he asked, 


with the image of Mrs. Stewart standing 
ghastly on the slopes of his imagination. 

“ I wadna be fit to tell ye, laddie, gien 
’t warna, as ye ken, ’at the Almichty’s 
been unco mercifu’ to me i’ the maitter 
o’ feelin’s. Yer freen’s i’ the Seaton an’ 
ower at Scaurnose hae feelin’s, an’ that 
’s hoo nane o’ them a’ has pluckit up 
hert to tell ye o’ the waggin’ o’ slander- 
ous tongues against ye.’’ 

“What are they sayin’ noo?’’ asked 
Malcolm with considerable indifference. 

“Naither mair nor less than that ye’re 
the father o’ an oonborn wean,’’ answer- 
ed Miss Horn. 

“I dinna freely unnerstan’ ye,’’ return- 
ed Malcolm, for the unexpectedness of 
the disclosure was scarcely to be master- 
ed at once. 

1 shall not put on record the plain form 
of honest speech whereby she made him 
at once comprehend the nature of the ca- 
lumny. He started to his feet and shout- 
ed, “Wha daur say that?’’ so loud that 
the listening Jean almost fell down the 
stair. 

“Wha sud say ’t but the lassie hersel’?’’ 
answered Miss Horn simply. "She maun 
hae the best richt to say wha ’s wha.’’ 

“It wad better become ony\iodej but 
her,’’ said Malcolm. 

“What mean ye there, laddie?’’ cried 
Miss Horn, alarmed. 

“ ’ At nane cud ken sae weel ’s hersel’ 
it was a damned lee. Wha is she ?’’ 

“Wha but Meg Partan’s Lizzy ?’’ 

“ Poor lassie ! is that it ? Eh, but I’m 
sorry for her ! She never said it was me. 
An’ whaever said it, surely ye dinna be- 
lieve ’t o’ me, mem ?’’ 

"Me believe ’t 1 Ma’colm MacPhail, 
wull ye daur insult a maiden wuman ’at’s 
stude clear o’ reproach till she’s lang past 
the danger o’ ’t ? It’s been wi’ unco sma’ 
diffeeclety, I maun alloo, for I haena’ 
been led into ony temptation.’’ 

“Eh, mem,’’ returned Malcolm, per- 
ceiving by the flash of her eyes and the 
sudden halt of her speech that she was 
really indignant, “I dinna ken what I 
hae said to anger ye.’’ 

“Anger me ! quo’ he ? What though 
I hae nae feelin’s 1 Will he daur till im- 
aigine ’at he wad be sittin’ there, an’ me 


222 


MALCOLM. 


handin’ him company, gien I believe him 
cawpable o’ turnin’ oot sic a meeserable, 
contemptible wratch ? The Lord come 
atween me an’ my wrath !” 

“ I beg yer pardon, mem. A body 
canna aye put things thegither afore he 
speyks. I’m richt sair ableeged till ye 
for takin’ my pairt.” 

“I tak nobody’s pairt but my ain, lad- 
die. Obleeged to me for haein’ a whgen 
coammon sense — a thing ’at I was born 
wi’ ! Toots ! Dinna haiver.” 

“Weel, mem, what wad ye hae me du ? 
I canna sen’ my auld daddie roon’ the 
toon wi’ his pipes to procleem ’at I’m no 
the man. I’m thinkin’ I’ll hae to lea’ the 
place.” 

“Wad ye sen’ yer daddy roon’ wi’ the 
pipes to say ’at ye was the man ? Ye 
micht as weel du the tane as the tither. 
Mony a better man has been waur mis- 
ca’d, an’ gart fowk forget ’at ever the 
lee was lee’d. Na, na, niver rin frae a 
lee. An’ never say, naither, ’at ye didna 
du the thing, ’cep’ it be laid straucht to 
yer face. Lat a lee lie i’ the dirt. Gien 
ye pike it up, the dirt ’ll stick till ye, 
though ye fling the lee ower the dyke at 
the warl’s en’. Na, na! Lat a lee lie, 
as ye wad the deevil’s tail ’at the laird’s 
Jock took aff wi the edge o’ ’s spaud.” 

‘‘A’ thing’s agane me the noo,” sighed 
Malcolm, 

‘‘Auld Jobb ower again I” returned Miss 
Horn almost sarcastically. ‘‘The deil had 
the warst o’ ’t, though, an’ wull hae i’ the 
lang hinner en’. Meantime ye maun face 
him. There’s nae airmor for the back 
aither i’ the Bible or the Pilgrim’s Pro- 
gress,” 

‘‘What wad ye hae me du, than, mem ?” 

‘‘Du! Wha said ye was to du ony- 
thing ? The best duin whiles is to bide 
still. Lat ye the jaw {^wave) gae ower 
ohn joukit {without ducking).''' 

‘‘Gien I binna to du onything I maist 
wiss I hadna kent,” said Malcolm, whose 
honorable nature writhed under the im- 
puted vileness. 

‘‘ It’s aye better to ken in what licht ye 
Stan’ wi’ ither fowk. It bauds ye ohn 
lippent ower muckle, an’ sae dune things 
or made remarks ’at wad be misread till 
ye. Ye maun baud an open ro’d, ’at 


the trowth whan it comes oot may hae 
free coorse. The ae thing ’at spites me 
is, ’at the verra fowk ’at was the first to 
spread yer ill report ’ll be the first to 
wuss ye weel whan the trowth ’s kent ; 
ay, an’ they’ll persuaud their verra sel’s 
’at they stack up for ye like born brithers.” 

‘‘ There maun be some jeedgment upo’ 
leein’.” 

‘‘ The warst wuss I hae agane ony sic 
backbiter is that he may live to be af- 
frontit at himsel’. Efter that he’ll be 
guid eneuch company for me. Gang 
yer wa’s, laddie — say yer prayers an’ 
baud up yer heid. Wha wadna raither 
be accused o’ a’ the sins i’ the comman’- 
ments nor be guilty o’ ane o’ them ?” 

Malcolm did hold up his head as he 
walked away. 

Not a single person was in the street. 
Far below the sea was chafing and toss- 
ing — gray-green broken into white. The 
horizon was formless with mist, hanging 
like thin wool from the heavens down to 
the face of the waters, against which the 
wind, which had shifted round consid- 
erably toward the north and blew in 
quicker - coming and more menacing 
gusts, appeared powerless. He would 
have gone to the sands and paced the 
shore till nightfall, but that he would not 
expose himself thus to unfriendly eyes 
and false judgments. He turned to the 
right instead, and walked along the top 
of the cliffs eastward. Buffeted by winds 
without and hurrying fancies within, he 
wandered on until he came near Colon- 
say Castle, at sight of which the desire 
awoke in him to look again on the scene 
of Lady Florimel’s terror. He crossed 
the head of the little bay and descended 
into the heart of the rock. Even there 
the wind blew dank and howling through 
all the cavernous hollows. As he ap- 
proached the last chamber, out of the 
Devil’s Window flew, with clanging 
wing, an arrow-barbed sea-gull down to 
the gray-veiled tumult below, and the 
joy of life for a moment seized his soul. 
But the next the dismay of that which 
is forsaken was upon him. It was not 
that the once lordly structure lay aban- 
doned to the birds and the gusts, but 
that she would never think of the place 


MALCOLM. 


223 


without an instant assay at forgetfulness. 
He turned and reascended, feeling like 
a ghost that had been wandering through 
the forlorn chambers of an empty skull. 

When he rose on the bare top of the 
ruin a heavy shower .from the sea was 
beating slant against the worn walls and 
the gaping clefts. Myriads of such rains 
had, with age-long inevitableness, crum- 
bled away the strong fortress till its 
threatful mass had sunk to an abject 
heap. Thus all-devouring Death — Nay, 
nay! it is all -sheltering, all - restoring 
Mother Nature receiving again into her 
mighty matrix the stuff worn out in the 
fashioning toil of her wasteful, greedy and 
slatternly children. In her genial bosom 
the exhausted gathers life, the effete be- 
comes generant, the disintegrate returns 
to resting and capable form. The roll- 
ing, oscillating globe dips it for an aeon 
in growing sea, lifts it from the sinking 
waters of its thousand-year bath to the 
furnace of the sun, remodels and re- 
moulds, turns ashes into flowers and di- 
vides mephitis into diamonds and breath. 
The races of men shift and hover like 
shadows over her surface, while, as a 
woman dries her garment before the 
household flame, she turns it, by portions 
now to and now from the sun-heart of 
fire. Oh, joy that all the hideous lacera- 
tions and vile gatherings of refuse which 
the worshipers of Mammon disfigure the 
earth withal, scoring the tale of their 
coming dismay on the visage "of their 
mother, shall one day lie fathoms deep 
under the blessed ocean, to be cleansed 
and remade into holy because lovely 
forms I May the ghosts of the men who 
mar the earth, turning her sweet rivers 
into channels of filth, and her living air 
into irrespirable vapors and pestilences, 
haunt the desolations they have made, 
until they loathe the work of their hands 
and turn from themselves with a divine 
repudiation I 

It was about half tide, and the sea 
coming up, with the wind straight from 
the north, when Malcolm, having de- 
scended to the shore of the little bay 
and scrambled out upon the rocks, be- 
thought him of a certain cave which he 
had not visited since he was a child, and, 


climbing over the high rocks between, 
took shelter there from the wind. He 
had forgotten how beautiful it was, and 
stood amazed at the richness of its color, 
imagining he had come upon a cave of 
the serpentine marble which is found on 
the coast ; for sides and roof and rugged 
floor were gorgeous with bands and spots 
and veins of green and rusty red. A 
nearer inspection, however, showed that 
these hues were not of the rock itself, 
but belonged to the garden of the ocean, 
and when he turned to face the sea, lo I 
they had all but vanished, the cave 
shone silvery gray with a faint moony 
sparkle, and out came the lovely carving 
of the rodent waves. All about, its sides 
were fretted in exquisite curves and fan- 
tastic yet ever-graceful knots and twists, 
as if a mass of gnarled and contorted 
roots, first washed of every roughness 
by some ethereal solvent, leaving only 
the soft lines of yet grotesque volutions, 
had been transformed into mingled sil- 
ver and stone. Like a soldier crab that 
had found a shell to his mind, he gazed 
through the yawning mouth of the cav- 
ern at the turmoil of the rising tide as it 
rushed straight toward him through a 
low jagged channel in the rocks. But 
straight with the tide came the wind, 
blowing right into the cave, and, finding 
it keener than pleasant, he turned and 
went farther in. After a steep ascent 
some little way the cavern took a sharp 
turn to one side, where not a breath of 
wind, not a glimmer of light reached, 
and there he sat down upon a stone and 
fell a-thinking. 

He must face the lie out, and he must 
accept any mother God had given him ; 
but with such a mother as Mrs. Stewart, 
and without Mr. Graham, how was he 
to endure the altered looks of his old 
friends? Faces indifferent before had 
grown suddenly dear to him, and opin- 
ions he would have thought valueless 
once had become golden in his eyes. 
Had he been such as to deserve their 
reproaches, he would doubtless have 
steeled himself to despise them, but his 
innocence bound him to the very people 
who judged him guilty. And there was 
that awful certainty slowly but steadily 


224 


MALCOLM. 


drawing nearer — that period of vacant 
anguish in which Lady Florimel must 
vanish from his sight, and the splendor 
of his life go with her, to return no more. 

But not even yet did he cherish any 
fancy of coming nearer to her than the 
idea of absolute service authorized. As 
often as the fancy had, compelled by the 
lady herself, crossed the horizon of his 
thoughts, a repellent influence from the 
same source had been at hand to sweep 
it afar into its antenatal chaos. But his 
love rose ever from the earth to which 
the blow had hurled it, purified again, 
once more all devotion and no desire, 
careless of recognition beyond the ac- 
ceptance of his offered service, and con- 
tent that the be-all should be the end-all. 

The cave seemed the friendliest place 
he had yet found. Earth herself had re- 
ceived him into her dark bosom, where 
no eye could discover him, and no voice 
reach him but that of the ocoan as it 
tossed and wallowed in the palm of 
God’s hand. He heard its roar on the 
rocks around him, and the air was filled 
with a loud noise of broken waters, while 
every now and then the wind rushed with 
a howl into- the cave, as if searching 
for him in its crannies : the wild raving 
soothed him, and he felt as if he would 
gladly sit there, in the dark torn with 
tumultuous noises, until his fate had un- 
folded itself. 

The noises thickened around him as 
the tide rose, but so gradually that, al- 
though at length he could not have heard 
his own voice, he was unaware of the 
magnitude to which the mighty uproar 
had enlarged itself. Suddenly some- 
thing smote the rock as with the ham- 
mer of Thor, and as suddenly the air 
around him grew stiflingly hot. The 
next moment it was again cold. He 
started to his feet in wonder and sought 
the light. As he turned the angle the 
receding back of a huge green, foam- 
spotted wave, still almost touching the 
roof of the cavern, was sweeping out 
again into the tumult. It had filled the 
throat of it, and so compressed the air 
within by the force of its entrance as to 
drive out for the moment a large portion 
of its latent heat. Looking then at his 


watch, Malcolm judged it must be about 
high tide : brooding in the darkness, he 
had allowed the moments to lapse un- 
heeded, and it was now impossible to 
leave the cavern until the tide had fallen. 
He returned into its penetral, and, sit- 
ting down with the patience of a fisher- 
man, again lost himself in reverie. 

The darkness kept him from perceiv- 
ing how the day went, and the rapidly 
increasing roar of the wind made the 
diminishing sound of the tide’s retreat 
less noticeable. He thought afterward 
that perhaps he had fallen asleep : any- 
how, when at length he looked out the 
waves were gone from the rock, and the 
darkness was broken only by the distant 
gleam of their white defeat. The wind 
was blowing a hurricane, and even for 
his practiced foot it was not easy to sur- 
mount the high, abrupt spines he must 
cross to regain the shore. It was so dark 
that he could see nothing of the castle, 
though it was but a few yards from him, 
and he resolved therefore, the path along 
the top of the cliffs being unsafe, to make 
his way across the fields and return by 
the highroad. The consequence was, 
that, what with fences and ditches, the 
violence of the wind and his uncertainty 
about his direction, it was so long before 
he felt the hard road under his feet that 
with good reason he feared the house 
would be closed for the night ere he 
reached it. 


CHAPTER LV. 

THE SAME NIGHT. 

When he came within sight of it, how- 
ever, he perceived, by the hurried move- 
ment of lights, that instead of being fold- 
ed in silence the house was in unwonted 
commotion. As he hastened to the south 
door the prince of the power of the air 
himself seemed to resist his entrance, so 
fiercely did the wind, eddying round the 
building, dispute every step he made to- 
ward it ; and when at length he reached 
and opened it a blast, rushing up the glen 
straight from the sea, burst wide the op- 
posite one and roared through the hall 
like a torrent. Lady Florimel, flitting 


MALCOLM. 


across it at the moment, was almost 
blown down, and shrieked aloud for 
help. Malcolm was already at the north 
door, exerting all his strength to close it, 
when she spied him, and bounding to 
him with white face and dilated eyes, 
exclaimed, “Oh, Malcolm! what a time 
you have been !” 

“What’s wrang, my leddy ?” cried 
Malcolm with respondent terror. 

“ Don’t you hear it 1" she answered. 
“The wind is blowing the house down. 
There’s just been a terrible fall, and 
every moment I hear it going. If my 
father were only come I We shall be 
all blown into the burn.’’ 

“Nae fear o’ that, my leddy,’’ return- 
ed Malcolm. “The wa’s o’ the auld 
carcass are ’maist live rock, an’ ’ill stan’ 
the warst win’ ’at ever blew — this side o’ 
the tropics, ony gait. Gien ’t war ance 
to get its nose in, I wadna say but it 
micht tirr [strip) the rufe, but it winna' 
blaw ’s intill the burn, my leddy. I’ll 
jist gang and see what’s the mischeef.’’ 

He was moving away, but Lady Flo- 
rimel stopped him. “ No, no, Malcolm,’’ 
she said. “ It’s very silly of me, I dare 
say, but I’ve been so frightened. They’re 
such a set of geese — Mrs. Courthope and 
the butler, and all of them ! Don’t leave 
me, please.’’ 

“ I maun gang and see what’s amiss, 
my leddy,’’ answered Malcolm; “but ye 
can come wi’ me gien ye like. What’s 
fa’en, div ye think ?’’ 

“ Nobody knows. It fell with a noise 
like thunder, and shook the whole house.’’ 

“ It’s far ower-dark to see onything 
frae the ootside,’’ rejoined Malcolm — 
“at least afore the mune’s up. It’s as 
dark ’s pick. But I can sune saitisfee 
mysel’ whether the de’il ’s i’ the hoose 
or no.’’ 

He took a candle from the hall-table 
and went up the square staircase, follow- 
ed by Florimel. 

“What w’y is ’t, my leddy, ’at the 
hoose is no lockit up, an’ ilka body i’ 
their beds?’’ he asked. 

“My father is coming home to-night: 
didn’t you know? But I should have 
thought a storm like this enough to ac- 
count for people not being in bed.’’ 

*5 


225 

“ It’s a fearfu’ nicht for him to be sae 
far frae his. Whaur’s he cornin’ frae ? 
Ye never speyk to me noo, my leddy, 
an’ naebody tellt me.’’ 

“He was to come from Fochabers to- 
night : Stoat took the bay mare to meet 
him yesterday.’’ 

“ He wad never start in sic a win’. It’s 
fit to blaw the saiddle aff o’ the mear’s 
back.’’ 

“ He may have started before it came 
on to blow like this,’’ said Lady Florimel. 

Malcolm liked the suggestion the less 
because of its probability, believing, in 
that case, he should have arrived long 
ago. But he took care not to increase 
Florimel’s alarm. 

By this time Malcolm knew the whole 
of the accessible inside of the roof well 
— better far than any one else about the 
house. From one part to another, over 
the whole of it, he now led Lady Flori- 
mel. In the big-shadowed glimmer of 
his one candle all parts of the garret 
seemed to him frowning with knitted 
brows over resentful memories,' as if the 
phantom forms of all the past joys and 
self-renewing sorrows, all the sins and 
wrongs, all the disappointments and fail- 
ures of the house, had floated up, gen- 
eration after generation, into that abode 
of helpless brooding, and there hung 
hovering above the fast fleeting life be- 
low, which now, in its turn, was ever 
sending up like fumes from heart and 
brain to crowd the dim, dreary, larva- 
haunted, dream-wallowing chaos of half- 
obliterated thought and feeling. To 
Florimel it looked a dread waste, a re- 
gion deserted and forgotten, mysterious 
with far-reaching nooks of darkness, 
and now awful with the wind raving and 
howling over slates and leads so close 
to them on all sides, as if a flying army 
of demons were tearing at the roof to 
get in and find covert from pursuit. 

At length they approached Malcolm’'s 
own quarters, where they would have to 
pass the very door of the wizard’s cham- 
ber to reach a short ladder-like stair that 
led up into the midst of naked rafters, 
when, coming upon a small storm-win- 
dow near the end of a long passage. 
Lady Florimel stopped and peeped out. 


226 


MALCOLM. 


“The moon is rising,” she said, and 
stood looking. 

Malcolm glanced over her shoulder. 
Eastward a dim light shone up from be- 
hind the crest of a low hill. Great part 
of the sky was clear, but huge masses 
of broken cloud went sweeping across 
the heavens. The wind had moderated. 

“Aren’t we somewhere near your friend 
the wizard ?” said Lady Florimel, with a 
slight tremble in the tone of mockery 
with which she spoke. 

Malcolm answered as if he were not 
quite certain. 

“Isn’t your own room somewhere 
hereabouts ?” asked the girl sharply. 

“ We’ll jist gang till ae ither queer 
place,” observed Malcolm, pretending 
not to have heard her, “and gien the 
rufe be a’ richt there, I s’ no bather my 
heid mair aboot it till the mornin’. It ’s 
but a feow steps farther, an’ syne a bit 
stair.” 

A fit of her not unusual obstinacy had, 
however, seized Lady Florimel. 

“I won’t move a step,” she said, “un- 
til you have told me where the wizard’s 
chamber is.” 

“Ahint ye, my leddy, gien ye wull hae 
’t,” answered Malcolm, not unwilling to 
punish her a little — “jist at the far en’ o’ 
the transe there.” 

In fact, the window in which she stood 
lighted the whole length of the passage 
from which it opened. 

Even as he spoke there sounded some- 
where as it were the slam of a heavy 
iron door, the echoes of which seemed 
to go searching into every cranny of the 
multitudinous garrets. Florimel gave a 
shriek, and laying hold of Malcolm clung 
to him in terror. A sympathetic tremor, 
set in motion by her cry, went vibrating 
through the fisherman’s powerful frame, 
and almost involuntarily he clasped her 
close. With wide eyes they stood staring 
down the long passage, of which, by the 
poor light they carried, they could not see 
a quarter of the length. Presently they 
heard a soft footfall along its floor, draw- 
ing slowly nearer through the darkness, 
and slowly out of the darkness grew the 
figure of a man, huge and dim, clad in 
a long flowing garment and coming 


straight on to where they stood. They 
clung yet closer together. The appari- 
tion came within three yards of them, 
and then they recognized Lord Lossie in 
his dressing-gown. 

They started asunder. Flonmel flew 
to her father, and Malcolm stood expect- 
ing the last stroke of his evil fortune. 
The marquis looked pale, stern and 
agitated. Instead of kissing his daugh- 
ter on the forehead as was his custom, 
he put her from him with one expanded 
palm, but the next moment drew her to 
his side. Then approaching Malcolm, 
he lighted at his the candle he carried, 
which a draught had extinguished on 
the way. 

“ Go to your room, MacPhail,” he said, 
and turned from him, his arm still round 
Lady Florimel. 

They walked away together down the 
long passage, vaguely visible in flicker- 
ing fits. All at once their light vanish- 
ed, and with it Malcolm’s eyes seemed 
to have left him. But a merry laugh, 
the silvery thread in which was certainly 
Florimel’s, reached his ears and brought 
him to himself. 


^ CHAPTER LVI. 

SOMETHING FORGOTPEN. 

I WILL not trouble my reader with the 
thoughts that kept rising, flickering and 
fading, one after another, for two or three 
dismal hours as he lay with eyes closed 
but sleepless. At length he opened them 
wide and looked out into the room. It 
was a bright moonlit night; the wind 
had sunk to rest ; all the world slept in 
the exhaustion of the storm. He only 
was awake ; he could lie no longer : he 
would go out, and discover, if possible, 
the mischief the tempest had done. 

He crept down the little spiral stair 
used only by the servants, and knowing 
all the mysteries of lock and bar was 
presently in the open air. First he 
sought a view of the building against 
the sky, but could not see that any por- 
tion was missing. He then proceeded 
to walk round the house, in order to find 
what had fallen. 


MALCOLM. 


227 


There was a certain neglected spot 
nearly under his own window, where a 
wall across an interior angle formed a 
little court or yard : he had once peeped 
in at the door of it, which was always 
half open, and seemed incapable of be- 
ing moved in either direction, but had 
seen nothing except a broken pail and 
a pile of brushwood. The flat arch over 
this door was broken, and the door itself 
half buried in a heap of blackened stones 
and mortar. Here was the avalanche 
whose fall had so terrified the household. 
The formless mass had yesterday been 
a fair-proportioned and ornate stack of 
chimneys. 

He scrambled to the top of the heap, 
and sitting down on a stone carved with 
a plaited Celtic band, yet again he fell 
a-thinking. The marquis must dismiss 
him in the morning : would it not be bet- 
ter to go away now, and spare poor old 
Duncan a terrible fit of rage ? He would 
suppose he had fled from the pseudo- 
maternal net of Mrs. Stewart, and not 
till he had found a place to which he 
could welcome him would he tell him 
the truth. But his nature recoiled both 
from the unmanliness of such a flight 
and from the appearance of conscious 
wrong it must involve, and he dismissed 
the notion. Scheme after scheme for the 
future passed through his head, and still 
he sat on the heap in the light of the 
high-gliding moon, like a ghost on the 
ruins of his earthly home, and his eyes 
went listlessly straying like servants with- 
out a master. Suddenly he found them 
occupied with a low iron-studded door 
in the wall of the house which he had 
never seen before. He descended, and 
found it hardly closed, for there was no 
notch to receive the heavy latch. Push- 
ing it open on great rusty hinges, he saw 
within what in the shadow appeared a 
precipitous descent. His curiosity was 
roused : he stole back to his room and 
fetched his candle, and having, by the 
aid of his tinder-box, lighted it in the 
shelter of the heap, peeped again through 
the doorway, and saw what seemed a 
narrow cylindrical pit, only, far from 
showing a great yawning depth, it was 
filled with stones and rubbish nearly to 


the bottom of the door. The top of the 
door reached almost to the vaulted roof, 
one part of which, c|ose to the inner side 
of the circular wall, was broken. Below 
this breach fragments of stone projected 
from the wall, suggesting the remnants 
of a stair. With the sight came a fore- 
sight of discovery. 

One foot on the end of a long stone 
sticking vertically from the rubbish, and 
another on one of the stones projecting 
from the wall, his head was already 
through the break in the roof, and in a 
minute more he was climbing a small, 
broken, but quite passable spiral stair- 
case, almost a counterpart of that already 
described as going like a huge auger-bore 
through the house from top to bottom — 
that indeed by which he had just de- 
scended. There was most likely more 
of it buried below, probably communi- 
cating with an outlet in some part of the 
rock toward the burn, but the portion of 
it which, from long neglect, had gradu- 
ally given way had fallen down the shaft, 
and cut off the rest with its ruins. 

At the height of a story he came upon 
a built-up doorway, and again, at a sim- 
ilar height, upon another, but the parts 
filled in looked almost as old as the rest 
of the wall. Not until he reached the 
top of the stair did he find a door. It 
was iron-studded and heavily hinged, 
like that below. It opened outward — 
noiselessly he found, as if its hinges had 
been recently oiled — and admitted him 
to a small closet, the second door of 
which he opened hurriedly with a beat- 
ing heart. Yes; there was the check- 
curtained bed : it must be the wizard’s 
chamber ! Crossing to another door, he 
found it both locked and further secured 
by a large iron bolt in a strong staple. 
This latter he drew back, but there was 
no key in the lock. With scarce a doubt 
remaining, he shot down the one stair 
and flew up the other to try the key that 
lay in his chest. One moment and he 
stood in the same room, admitted by the 
door next his own. 

Some exposure was surely not far off. 
Anyhow, here was room for counterplot 
on the chance of baffling something un- 
derhand — villainy most likely where Mrs. 


228 


MALCOLM. 


Catanach was concerned. And yet, with 
the control of it thus apparently given 
into his hands, he must depart, leaving 
the house at the mercy of a low woman, 
for the lock of the wizard’s door would 
not exclude her long if she wished to en- 
ter and range the building. He would 
not go, however, without revealing all to 
the marquis, and would at once make 
some provision toward her discomfiture. 

Going to the forge, and bringing thence 
a long bar of iron to use as a lever, he 
carefully drew from the door-frame the 
staple of the bolt, and then replaced it 
so that while it looked just as before, a 
good push would now send it into the 
middle of the room.’ Lastly, he slid the 
bolt into it, and having carefully removed 
all traces of disturbarue^left the mysteri- 
ous chamber by its own stair, and once 
more ascending to the passage, locked 
the door and retired to his room with the 
key. 

He had now plenty to think about be- 
yond himself. Here certainly was some 
small support to the legend of the wizard 
earl. The stair which he had discovered 
had been in common use at one time : 
its" connection with other parts of the 
house had been cut off with an object, 
and by degrees it had come to be for- 
gotten altogether : many villainies might 
have been effected by means of it. Mrs. 
Catanach must have discovered it the 
same night on which he found her there, 
had gone away by it then, and had cer- 
tainly been making use of it since. When 
he smelt the sulphur she must have been 
lighting a match. 

It was now getting toward morning, 
and at last he was tired. He went to 
bed and fell asleep. When he woke it 
was late, and as he dressed he heard the 
noise of hoofs and wheels in the stable- 
yard. He was sitting at his breakfast in 
Mrs. Courthope’s room when she came 
in full of surprise at the sudden depart- 
ure of her !dr4and lady. The marquis 
had rung for hi^pan, and Lady Flori- 
mel for her maid, 'hs soon as it was 
light; orders were sent at once to the 
stable ; four horses were put to the trav- 
eling carriage ; and they were gone, Mrs. 
Courthope could not tell whither. 


Dreary as was the house without Flo- 
rimel, things had turned out a siiade or 
two better than Malcolm had expected, 
and he braced himself to endure his loss. 


CHAPTER LVII. 

THE laird’s quest. 

Things were going pretty well with 
the laird : Phemy and he drew yet closer 
to each other, and as he became yet 
more peaceful in her company, his 
thoughts flowed more freely and his ut- 
terance grew less embarrassed, until at 
length, in talking with her, his speech 
was rarely broken with even a slight 
impediment, and a stranger might have 
overheard a long conversation between 
them without coming to any more dis- 
paraging conclusion in regard to him 
than that the hunchback was peculiar 
in mind as well as in body. But his 
nocturnal excursions continuing to cause 
her apprehension, and his representations 
of the delights to be gathered from Na- 
ture while she slept at the same time al- 
luring her greatly, Phemy had become, 
both for her own pleasure and his pro- 
tection, anxious in these also to be his 
companion. 

With a vital recognition of law, and 
great loyalty to any utterance of either 
parent, she had yet been brought up in 
an atmosphere of such liberty that ex- 
cept a thing were expressly so condition- 
ed, or in itself appeared questionable, 
she never dreamed of asking permission 
to do it; and, accustomed as she had 
been to go with the laird everywhere, 
and to be out with him early and late, 
her conscience never suggested the pos- 
sibility of any objection to her getting 
up at twelve, instead of four or five, to 
accompany him. It was some time, 
however, before the laird himself would 
consent ; and then he would not unfre- 
qucntly interpose with limitations, espe- 
cially if the night were not mild and dry, 
sending her always home again to bed. 
The mutual rule and obedience between 
them was something at once strange and 
lovely. 

At midnight Phemy would enter the 


MALCOLM. 


229 


shop and grope her way until she stood 
under the trap-door. This was the near- 
est she could come to the laird’s cham- 
ber, for he had not only declined having 
the ladder stand there for his use, but 
had drawn a solemn promise from the 
carpenter that at night it should always 
be left slung up to the joists. For him- 
self he had made a rope-ladder, which 
he could lower from beneath when he 
required it, invariably drew up after him, 
and never used for coming down. 

One night Phemy made her customary 
signal by knocking against the trap-door 
with a long slip of wood : it opened, and, 
as usual, the body of the laird appeared 
hung for a moment in the square gap, 
like a huge spider, by its two hands, one 
on each side, then dropped straight to the 
floor, when without a word he hastened 
forth, and Phemy followed. 

The night was very still, and rather 
dark, for it was cloudy about the horizon 
and there was no moon. Hand in hand 
the two made for the shore, here very 
rocky — a succession of promontories with 
little coves between. Down into one of 
these they went by a winding path, and 
stood at the lip of the sea. A violet dim- 
ness — or rather a semi-transparent dark- 
ness — hung over it, through which came 
now and then a gleam where the slow 
heave of some Triton shoulder caught a 
shine of the sky : a hush also, as of sleep, 
hung over it, which not to break the 
wavelets of the rising tide carefully still- 
ed their noises; and the dimness and 
the hush seemed one. They sat down 
on a rock that rose but a foot or two from 
the sand, and for some moments listen- 
ed in silence to the inarticulate story of 
the night. 

At length the laird turned to Phemy, 
and taking one of her hands in both of 
his very solemnly said, as if breaking to 
her his life’s trouble, “ Phemy, I dinna 
ken whaur I cam frae.” 

“ Hoot, laird ! ye ken weel eneuch ye 
cam frae Go-od,” answered Phemy, 
lengthening out the word with solemn 
utterance. 

The laird did not reply, and again the 
night closed around them and the sea 
hushed at their hearts. But a soft light air 


began to breathe from the south, and it 
waked the laird to more active thought. 
“Gien He wad but come oot an’ shaw 
himsel’ !” he said. “What for disna He 
come oot ?’’ 

“ Wha wad ye hae come oot ?’’ asked 
Phemy. 

“Ye ken wha, weel eneuch. They say 
He ’s a’ gait at ance : jist hearken. 
What for will He aye bide in, an’ never 
come oot an’ lat a puir body see Him ?’’ 

The speech was broken into pauses, 
filled by the hush rather -than noise of 
the tide, and the odor-like wandering of 
the soft air in the convolutions of their 
ears. 

“The lown win’ maun be his breath 
— sae quaiet ! He ’s no hurryin’ himsel’ 
the nicht. There ’s never naebody rins 
efter Hint. — Eh, Phemy! I jist thoucht 
He was gauin’ to speyk.’’ 

This last exclamation he uttered in a 
whisper as the louder gush of a larger 
tide-pulse died away on the shore. 

“Luik, Phemy, luik!’’ he resumed. 
“ Luik oot yonner. Dinna ye see some- 
thing ’at micht grow to something?’’ 

His eyes were fixed on a faint spot of 
'steely blue out on the sea, not far from 
the horizon. It was hard to account for, 
with such a sky overhead, wherein was 
no lighter part to be seen that might be 
reflected in the water below ; but neither 
of the beholders was troubled about its 
cause : there it glimmered on in the dim- 
ness of the wide night — a cold, faint 
splash of blue-gray. 

“I dinna think muckle o’ that, sir,’’ 
said Phemy. 

“It micht be the mark o’ the sole o’ 
his fut, though,’’ returned the laird. “ He 
micht hae jist setten ’t doon, an’ the wat- 
ter hafe lowed {^fiamed) up aboot it, an’ 
the low no be willin’ to gang oot. Luik 
sharp, Phemy I there may come anither 
at the neist stride — anither futmark. 
Luik ye that gait an’ I’ll luik this. What 
for willna He come oot ? ,The lift maun 
be fu’ o’ Him, an’ I’rnjKlhgert for a sicht 
o’ Him. Gien ye-c^'e onything, Phemy, 
cry oot.’’ 

“What will I cry?’’ asked Phemy. 

“ Cry ‘ Father o’ lichts I’ ’’ answered 
the laird. 


230 


MALCOLM. 


“Will He hear to that, div ye think, 
sir?” 

“Whakens? He micht jist turn his 
heid, an’ ae luik wad sair me for a hun- 
ner year.” 

“I s’ cry gien I see onything,” said 
Phemy. 

As they sat watching, by degrees the 
laird’s thoughts swerved a little. Plis 
gaze had fixed on the northern horizon, 
where, as if on the outer threshold of 
some mighty door, long low clouds, with 
varied suggestion of recumbent animal 
forms, had stretched themselves, like 
creatures of the chase watching for their 
lord to issue. 

“.Maybe He’s no oot o’ the hoose yet,” 
he said. “Surely it canna be but He 
comes oot ilka nicht. He wad never 
hae made sic a sicht o’ bonny things to 
lat them lie wi’oot onybody to gaither 
them. An’ there’s nae ill fowk the furth 
at this time o’ nicht to mak an oogly din 
or disturb Him wi’ the sicht o’ them. He 
maun come oot i’ the quaiet o’ the nicht, 
or else what’s ’t a’ for ? Ay, He keeps 
the nicht till himsel’, an’ lea’s the day 
to hiz (us). That’ll be what the deep 
sleep fa’s upo’ men for, doobtless — to 
hand them oot o’ his gait. Eh ! I wuss 
He wad come oot whan I was by. I 
micht get a glimpo’ Him. Maybe He 
wad tak the hump aff o’ me, and set 
things in order i’ my heid, an’ make me 
like ither fowk. Eh me ! that wad be 
gran’ ! Naebody wad daur to touch me 
syne. Eh, Michty ! come oot! Father 
o’ lichts ! Father o’ lichts I” 

He went on repeating the words till, 
growing softer and softer, his voice died 
away in silence, and still as his seat of 
stone he sat, a new Job, on the verge of 
the world-waters, like the old Job on his 
dunghill when he cried out, “Lo, He 
goeth by me, and I see Him not ; He 
passeth on also, but I perceive Him not. 
Call Thou, and I will answer; or let me 
speak, and answer Thou me. OK that I 
knew where I might find Him ! that I 
might come even to his seat I Behold I 
go forward, but He is not there ; and 
backward, but I cannot perceive Him : 
on the left hand, where He doth work, 
but I cannot behold Him; He hideth 


himself on the right hand, that I cannot 
see Him.” 

At length he rose and wandered away 
from the shore, his head sunk upon his 
chest. Phemy rose also, and followed 
him in silence. The child had little of 
the poetic element in her nature, but she 
had much of that from which everything 
else has to be developed — heart. When 
they reached the top of the brae she join- 
ed him, and said, putting her hand in his, 
but not looking at or even turning toward 
him, “Maybe He’ll come oot upo’ ye 
afore ye ken some day — whan ye’re no 
luikin’ for Him.” 

The laird stopped, gazed at her for 
a moment, shook his head and walked 
on. 

Grassy steeps everywhere met the 
stones and sands of the shore, and the 
grass and the sand melted, as it were, 
and vanished each in the other. Just 
where they met in the next hollow stood 
a small building of stone with a tiled 
roof. It was now strangely visible through 
the darkness, for from every crevice a 
fire-illumined smoke was pouring. But 
the companions were not alarmed, or 
even surprised. They bent their way 
toward it without hastening a step, and 
coming to a fence that enclosed a space 
around it, opened a little gate and pass- 
ed through. A sleepy watchman chal- 
lenged them. 

“ It’s me,” said the laird. 

“A fine nicht, laird,” returned the 
voice, and said no more. 

The building was divided into several 
compartments, each with a separate en- 
trance. On the ground in each burned 
four or five little wood fires, and the 
place was filled with smoke and glow. 
The smoke escaped partly by openings 
above the doors, but mostly by the cran- 
nies of the tiled roof. Ere it reached 
these, however, it had to pass through 
a great multitude of pendent herrings. 
Hung up by the gills, layer above layer, 
nearly to the roof, their last tails came 
down as low as the laird’s head. From 
beneath nothing was to be seen but a 
firmament of herring-tails. These fish 
were the last of the season, and were 
thus undergoing the process of kipper- 


MALCOLM. 


3.11 


irig. It was a new venture in the place, 
and its success as yet a question. 

The laird went into one of the com- 
partments, and searching about a little 
amongst the multitude within his reach, 
took down a plump one, then cleared 
away the blazing wood from the top of 
one of the fires, and laid his choice upon 
the glowing embers beneath. 

“What are ye duin’ there, laird?” 
cried P'hemy from without, whose nos- 
trils the resulting odor had quickly 
reached. “ The fish is no yours.” 

“Ye dinna think I wad tak it want- 
in’ leave, Phemy?” returned the laird. 
“ Mony a supper hae I made this w’y, an’ 
mony anither I houp to mak. It’ll no 
be this sizzon, though, for this lot ’s the 
last o’ them. They’re fine aitin’, but I’m 
some feart they winna keep.” 

“Wha gae ye leave, sir?” persisted 
Phemy, showing herself the indivertible 
guardian of his morals as well as of his. 
freedom. 

“Ow, Mr. Runcie himsel’, of coorse,” 
answered the laird. “ Wull I pit ane on 
to you ?” 

“ Did ye speir leave for me tu?” asked 
the righteous maiden. 

“Ow, na, but I’ll tell him the neist 
time I see him.” 

“I’m nae for ony,” said Phemy. 

The fish wanted little cooking. The 
laird turned it, and after another half 
minute of the fire took it up by the tail, 
sat down on a stone beside the door, 
spread a piece of paper on his knees, 
laid the fish upon it, pulled a lump of 
bread from his pocket, and proceeded to 
make his supper. Ere he began, how- 
ever, he gazed all around with a look 
which Phemy interpreted as a renewed 
search for the Father of lights, whom he 
would fain thank for his gifts. When he 
had finished he threw the remnants into 
one of the fires, then went down to the 
sea, and there washed his face and hands 
in a rock-pool, after which they set off 
again, straying yet farther along the 
coast. 

One of the peculiarities in the friend- 
ship of the strange couple was that, al- 
though so closely attached, they should 
maintain such a large amount of mu- 


tual independence. They never quarrel- 
ed, but would flatly disagree, with never 
an attempt at compromise : the whole 
space between midnight and morning 
would sometimes glide by without a word 
spoken between them, and the one or 
the other would often be lingering far 
behind. As, however, the ultimate goal 
of the night’s wandering was always un- 
derstood between them, there was little 
danger of their losing each other. 

On the present occasion the laird, still' 
full of his quest, was the one who linger- 
ed. Every few minutes he would stop 
and stare, now all around the horizon, 
now up to the zenith, now over the wastes 
of sky, for any moment, from any spot 
in heaven, earth or sea, the Father of 
lights might show foot or hand or face. 
He had at length seated himself on a 
lichen-covered sto^ne with his head buried 
in his hands, as if, wearied with vain 
search for Him outside, he would now 
look within and see if God might not be 
there, when suddenly a sharp exclama- 
tion from Phemy reached him. He lis- 
tened. 

“Rin ! rin ! rin !” she cried, the last word 
prolonged into a scream. 

While it yet rang in his ears the laird 
was halfway down the steep. In the 
open country he had not a chance, but 
knowing every cranny in the rocks large 
enough to hide him, with anything like 
a start near enough to the shore for his 
short-lived speed he was all but certain 
to evade his pursuers, especially in such 
a dark night as this. 

He was not in the least anxious about 
Phemy, never imagining she might be 
less sacred in other eyes than in his, and 
knowing neither that her last cry of lov- 
ing solicitude had gathered intensity from 
a cruel grasp, nor that while he fled in 
safety she remained a captive. 

Trembling and panting like a hare just 
escaped from the hounds, he squeezed 
himself into a cleft, where he sat half 
covered with water until the morning be- 
gan to break. Then he drew himself 
out and crept along the shore, from pointy 
to point, with keen circumspection, until 
he was right under the village and with 
in hearing of its inhabitants, when he 


232 


MALCOLM. 


ascended hurriedly and ran home. But 
having reached his burrow, pulled down 
his rope-ladder and ascended, he found 
with trebled dismay that his loft had 
been invaded during the night. Several 
of the hooked cords had been cut away, 
on one or two were shreds of clothing, 
and on the window-sill was a drop of 
blood. 

He threw himself on the mound for a 
m^oment, then started to his feet, caught 
up his plaid, tumbled from the loft, and 
fled from Scaurnose as if a visible pesti- 
lence had been behind him. 


CHAPTER LVIII. 

MALCOLM AND MRS. STEWART. 

When her parents discovered that 
Phemy was not in her garret, it occa- 
sioned them no anxiety. When they 
had also discovered that neither was the 
laird in his loft, and were naturally seized 
with the dread that some evil had be- 
fallen him, his hitherto invariable habit 
having been to house himself with the 
first gleam of returning day, they sup- 
posed that Phemy, finding he had not 
returned, had set out to look for him. 
As the day wore on, however, without 
her appearing, they began to be a little 
uneasy about her as well. Still, the two 
might be together, and the explanation 
of their absence a very simple and satis- 
factory one : for a time, therefore, they 
refused to admit importunate disquiet. 
But before night anxiety, like the slow 
but persistent waters of a flood, had in- 
sinuated itself through their whole being 
— nor theirs alone, but had so mastered 
and possessed the whole village that at 
length all employment was deserted, and 
every person capable joined in a search 
along the coast, fearing to find their 
bodies at the foot of some cliff. The re- 
port spread to the neighboring villages. 
In Portlossie, Duncan went round with 
his pipes, arousing attention by a brief 
blast, and then crying the loss at every 
Incomer. As soon as Malcolm heard of 
it he hurried to find Joseph, but the only 
explanation of their absence he was pre- 
pared to suggest was one that had al- 


ready occurred to almost everybody — 
that the laird, namely, had been captured 
by the emissaries of his mother, and that 
to provide against a rescue they had car- 
ried off his companion with him ; on 
which supposition there was every prob- 
ability that within a few days at farthest 
Phemy would be restored unhurt. 

"There can be little doobt they hae 
gotten a grip o’ ’m at last, puir fallow !’’ 
said Joseph. “But whatever’s come till 
him, we canna sit doon an’ ait oor mait 
ohn kent hoo Phemy’s farin’, puir wee 
lamb ! Ye maun jfst baud awa’ ower to 
Kirkbyres, Ma’colm, an’ get word o’ yer 
mither, an’ see gien onything can be 
made oot o’ her.’’ 

The proposal fell on Malcolm like a 
great billow. "Blue Peter,’’ he said, 
looking him in the face, " I took it as a 
mark o’ yer frcen’ship ’at ye never spak 
the word to me. What richt has ony 
man to ca’ that wuman my mither ? 1 

hae never allooed it.’’ 

“I’m thinkin’,’’ returned Joseph, the 
more easily nettled that his horizon also 
was full of trouble, “ your word upo’ the 
the maitter winna gang sae far ’s John 
o’ Groat’s. Ye’ll no be suppeent iox your 
witness upo’ the pint.’’ 

" I wad as sune gang a mile intill the 
mou’ o’ hell as gang to Kirkbyres,’’ said , 
Malcolm. 

“I hae my answer,’’ said Peter, and 
turned away. 

" But I s’ gang,’’ Malcolm went on. 

“ The thing ’at maun be can be. Only 
I tell ye this, Peter,’’ he added — "gien 
ever ye say sic a word ’s yon i’ my bear- 
in’ again — that is, afore the wuman has 
priven hersel’ what she says — I s’ gang 
by ye ever efter ohn spoken, for I’ll ken 
’at ye want nae mair o’ 7ne” 

Joseph, who had been standing with 
his back to his friend, turned and held 
out his hand. ( 

Malcolm took it. " Ae queston afore I * 
gang, Peter,’’ he said. “What for didna 
ye tell me what fowk was sayin’ aboot 
me anent Lizzy Findlay ?’’ 

" ’Cause I didna believe a word o’ ’t, 
an’ I wasna gaen’ to add onything to yer 
troubles.’’ 

"Lizzy never mootit sic a thing 


MALCOLM. 


233 


“Never.” 

“ I was sure o’ that. Noo I’ll awa’ to 
Kirkbyres. God help me ! I wad raither 
face Sawtan an’ his muckle tyke ! But 
dinna ye expec’ ony news. Gien yon 
ane kens, she’s a’ the surer no to tell. 
Only ye sanna say I didna du my best 
for ye.” 

It was the hardest trial of the will Mal- 
colm had yet had to encounter. Trials 
of submission he had had, and tolerably 
severe ones, but to go and do what the 
whole feeling recoils from is to be weigh- 
ed only against abstinence from what the 
whole feeling urges toward. He walk- 
ed determinedly home, where Stoat sad- 
dled a horse for him while he changed 
his dress, and once more he set out for 
Kirkbyres. 

Had Malcolm been at the time capa- 
ble of attempting an analysis of his feel- 
ing to\Vard Mrs. Stewart, he would have 
found it very difficult to effect. Satisfied 
as he was of the untruthful, even cruel, 
nature of the woman who claimed him, 
and conscious of a strong repugnance to 
any nearer approach between them, he 
was yet aware of a certain indescribable 
fascination in her. This, however, only 
caused him to recoil from her the more, 
partly from dread lest it might spring 
from the relation she asserted, and part- 
ly that, whatever might be its root, it 
wrought upon him in a manner he hard- 
ly disliked the less that it certainly had 
nothing to do with the filial. But his 
feelings were too many and too active to 
admit of the analysis of any one of them, 
and ere he reached the house his mood 
had grown fierce. 

He was shown into a room where the 
fire had not been many minutes lighted. 
It had long, narrow windows, over which 
the ivy had grown so thick that he was 
in it some moments ere he saw through 
the dusk that it was a library — not half 
the size of that at Lossie House, but far 
more ancient and, although evidently 
neglected, more study-like. 

A few minutes passed, then the door 
softly opened, and Mrs. Stewart glided 
swiftly across the floor with outstretched 
arms. “At last!” she said, and would 
have clasped him to her bosom. 


But Malcolm stepped back. “Na, na, 
mem,” he said : “it takes twa to that.” 

“Malcolm!” she exclaimed, her voice 
trembling with emotion — of some kind. 

“Ye may ca’ me your son, mem, but 
I ken nae gr’un’ yet for ca’in’ you my — ” 
He could not say the word. 

“That is very true, Malcolm,” she re- 
turned gently, “but this interview is not 
of my seeking. I wish to precipitate 
nothing. So long as there is a single 
link, or half a link even, missing from 
the chain of which one end hangs at my 
heart — ” She paused, with her hand on 
her bosom, apparently to suppress rising 
emotion. Had she had the sentence 
ready for use? — “I will not subject my- 
self,” she went on, “to such treatment as 
it seems I^ust look for from you. It is 
hard to lose a son, but it is harder yet to 
find him again after he has utterly ceased 
to be one.” Here she put her handker- 
chief to her eyes. “Till the matter is 
settled, however,” she resumed, “let us 
be friends — or at least not enemies. 
What did you come for now ? — not to in- 
sult me,'surely ? Is there anything I can 
do for you ?” 

Malcolm felt the dignity of her be- 
havior, but not the less, after his own 
straightforward manner, answered her 
question to the point : “ I cam aboot 
naething concernin’ mysel’, mem. I cam 
to see whether ye kent onything aboot 
Phemy Mair.” 

“Is it a wo — ?' I don’t even know 
who she is. You don’t mean the young 
woman that — ? Why do you come to 
me about her ? Who is she ?” 

Malcolm hesitated a moment : if she 
really did not know what he meant, was 
there any risk in telling her? But he 
saw none. “ Wha is she, mem ?” he re- 
turned. “I whiles think she maun be 
the laird’s guid angel, though in shape 
she’s but a wee bit lassie. She maks up 
for a heap to the laird. Him an’ her, 
mem, they’ve disappeart thegither, nae- 
body kens whaur.” 

Mrs. Stewart laughed a low, unpleas- 
ant laugh, but made no other reply. 

Malcolm went on: “An’ it’s no to be 
wonnert at gien fowk wull hae ’t ’at ye 
maun ken something aboot it, mem.” 


234 


MALCOLM. 


“ I know nothing whatever,” she re- 
turned emphatically. ‘‘Believe me or 
not, as you please,” she added with 
heightened color. ‘‘ If I did know any- 
thing,” she went on, with apparent truth- 
fulness, ‘‘ I don’t know that I should feel 
bound to tell it. As it is, however, I can 
only say I know nothing of either of 
them. That I do say most solemnly.” 

Malcolm turned, satisfied at least that 
he could learn no more. 

‘‘You are not going to leave me so ?” 
the lady said, and her face grew ‘‘sad as 
§ad could be.” 

‘‘There’s naething mair atween ’s, 
mem,” answered Malcolm without turn- 
ing even his face. 

‘‘You will be sorry for treating me so 
some day.” 

‘‘Weel, than, mem, I will be, but that 
day’s no the day [to-day')." 

‘‘Think what you could do for your 
poor witless brother if — ” 

‘‘Mem,” interrupted Malcolm, turning 
right round and drawing himself up in 
anger, ‘‘pruv’ ’at I ’m your son, an’ that 
meenute I speir at you wha was my 
father.” 

Mrs. Stewart changed color — neither 
with the blush of innocence nor with the 
pallor of guilt, but with the gray of min- 
gled rage and hatred. She took a step 
forward with the quick movement of a 
snake about to strike, but stopped mid- 
way and stood looking at him with glit- 
tering eyes, teeth clenched and lips half 
open. 

Malcolm returned her gaze for a mo- 
ment or two. ‘‘T^ never was the mither, 
whaever was the father o’ me,” he said, 
and walked out of the room. 

He had scarcely reached the door 
when he heard a heavy fall, and' look- 
ing round saw the lady lying motionless 
on the floor. Thoroughly on his guard, 
however, and fearful both of her hatred 
and her blandishments, he only made 
the more haste down stairs, where he 
found a maid and sent her to attend o 
her mistress. In a minute he was mount- 
ed and trotting fast home, considerably 
happier than before, inasmuch as he was 
now almost beyond doubt convinced that 
Mrs. Stewart was not his mother. 


CHAPTER LIX. 

AN HONEST PLOT. 

Ever since the visit of condolence 
with which the narrative of these events 
opened there had been a coolness be- 
tween Mrs. Mellis and Miss Horn. Mr. 
Mellis’s shop was directly opposite Miss 
Horn’s house, and his wife’s parlor was 
over the shop, looking into the street; 
hence the two neighbors could not but 
see each other pretty often : beyond a 
stiff nod, however, no sign of smoulder- 
ing friendship had as yet broken out. 
Miss Horn was consequently a good deal 
surprised when, having gone into the 
shop to buy some trifle, Mr. Mellis in- 
formed her in all but a whisper that his 
wife was very anxious to see her alone 
for a moment, and begged her to have 
the goodness to step up to the parlor. 
His customer gave a small snort, betray- 
ing her first impulse to resentment, but 
her nobler nature, which was never far 
from the surface, constrained her com- 
pliance. 

Mrs. Mellis rose hurriedly when the 
plumb-line figure of her neighbor appear- 
ed, ushered in by her husband, and re- 
ceived her with a somewhat embarrassed 
empressement, arising from the conscious- 
ness of good-will, disturbed by the fear 
of imputed meddlesomeness. She knew 
the inward justice of Miss Horn, how- 
ever, and relied upon that, even while 
she encouraged herself by waking up 
the ever-present conviction of her own 
great superiority in the petite vio7'ale of 
social intercourse. Her general tenden- 
cy, indeed, was to look down upon Miss 
Horn : is it not usually the less that looks 
down on the greater ? I had almost said 
it must be, for that the less only can look 
down ; but that would not hold absolute- 
ly in the kingdoms of this world, while 
in the kingdom of heaven it is all look- 
ing iip. 

‘‘Sit ye doon. Miss Horn,” she said; 
‘‘ it ’s a lang time sin’ we had a news the- 
gither.” 

Miss Horn seated herself with a be- 
grudged acquiescence. 

Had Mrs. Mellis been more of a tac- 
tician, she would have dug a few ap- 
proaches ere she opened fire upon the 


MALCOLM. 


235 


fortress of her companion’s fair-hearing; 
but instead of that she at once discharged, 
the imprudent question: “Was ye at 
hame last nicht, mem, atvveen the hoors 
o’ aucht an’ nine ?’’ 

A shot which instantly awoke in reply 
the whole battery of Miss Horn’s indig- 
nation : “ Wha am I, to be speirt sic a 
queston ? Wha but yersel’ wad hae daurt 
it, Mistress Mellis ?’’ 

“Huly [softly], huly. Miss Horn!’’ ex- 
postulated her questioner. “I hae no 
wuss to pry intill ony secrets o’ yours, 
or — ’’ 

"Secrets!” shouted Miss Horn. 

But her consciousness of good intent 
and all but assurance of final victory up- 
held Mrs. Mellis. “ — or Jean’s aither,” 
she went on, apparently regardless ; “but 
I wad fain be sure ye kent a’ aboot yer 
ain hoose ’at a body micht chance to see 
frae the croon o’ the caus’ay [iniddle of 
the street)." 

“The parlor-blind ’s gane up crookit 
sin’ ever that thoomb- fingered cratur, 
Watty Witherspail, made a new roller 
till ’t. Gien ’t be that ye mean. Mistress 
Mellis—” 

“ Hoots !” returned the other. “ Hoo 
far can ye lippen to that Jean o’ yours, 
mem ?” 

“ Nae far’er nor the len’th o’ my nose 
an’ the breid o’ my twa een,” was the 
scornful answer. 

Although, however, she thus manifest- 
ed her resentment of Mrs. Mellis’s cate- 
chetical attempts at introducing her sub- 
ject, Miss Horn had no desire to prevent 
the free outcome of her approaching 
communication. 

“ In that case, I may speyk oot,” said 
Mrs. Mellis. 

“Use yer freedom.” 

“ Weel, I wull. Ye was hardly oot o’ 
the hoose last nicht afore — ” 

“Ye saw me gang oot?” 

“Ay, did I.” 

“ What gart ye speir, than ? What for 
sud a body come screwin’ up a straucht 
stair — noo the face an’ noo the back o’ 
her?” 

“Weel, I nott [needed) na hae speirt. 
But that’s naething to the p’int. Ye 
hadna been gane, as I was sayin’, ower 


a five meenutes whan in cam a licht 
intill the bedroom neist the parlor, an’ 
Jean appeart wi’ a can’le in her han’. 
There was nae licht i’ this room but the 
licht o’ the fire — an’ no muckle o’ that, 
for ’twas maistly peat — sae I saw her 
weel eneuch ohn bein’ seen mysel’. 
She cam straucht to the window and 
drew doon the blind, but lost hersel’ a 
bit, or she wad never hae set doon her 
can’le whaur it cuist a shaidow o’ hersel’ 
an’ her duin’s upo’ the blind.” 

“An’ what was ’t she was efter, the 
jaud?” cried Miss Horn, without any 
attempt to conceal her growing interest. 

“She made naethin’ o’ ’t, whatever it 
was ; for doon the street cam the schuil- 
maister an’ chappit at the door, an’ gaed 
in an’ waitit till ye cam hame.” 

“Weel?” said Miss Horn. 

But Mrs. Mellis held her peace. 

“Weel?” repeated Miss Horn. 

“Weel,” returned Mrs. Mellis, with a 
curious mixture of deference and con- 
scious sagacity in her tone, “a’ ’at I tak 
upo’ me to say is. Think ye twise afore 
ye lippen to that Jean o’ yours.” 

“I lippen naething till her. I wad as 
sune lippen to the dottle o’ a pipe amo’ 
dry strae. What saw ye. Mistress Mel- 
lis ?” 

“Ye needna speyk like that,” returned 
Mrs. Mellis, for Miss Horn’s tone was 
threatening: “I’m no Jean.” 

“What saw ye?” repeated Miss Horn, 
more gently, but not less eagerly. 

“Whause is that kist o’ mahogany 
drawers i’ that bedroom, gien I may 
preshume to speir?” 

“ Whause but mine ?” 

“ They’re no Jean’s ?” 

“Jean’s!” 

“Ye micht hae latten her keep her bit 
duds i’ them, for onything I kent.” 

“Jean’s duds in my Grizel’s drawers! 
A lik’ly thing !” 

“ Hm ! They war poor Miss Cam’- 
eP’s, war they ?” 

“They war Grizel Cam’ell’s drawers 
as lang’s she had use for ony ; but what 
for ye sud say poor till her I dinna ken, 
’cep’ it be ’at she ’s gane whaur they 
haena muckle ’at needs layin’ in draw- 
ers. That’s neither here nor there. Div 


236 


MALCOLM. 


ye tell me ’at Jean was intromittin’ wi’ 
thae drawers ? They’re a’ lockit, ilk 
ane o’ them ; an’ they’re guid locks.” 

” No ower-guid to hae keyes to them, 
are they ?” 

“ The keyes are i’ my pooch,” said 
Miss Horn, clapping her hand to the 
skirt of her dress. ‘‘They’re aye i’ my 
pooch, though I haena had the feelin’s 
to mak use o’ them sin’ she left me.” 

‘‘Are ye sure they war there last nicht, 
mem ?” 

Miss Horn seemed struck. ‘‘ I had on 
my black silk last nicht,’ she answer- 
ed vaguely, and was silent, pondering 
doubtfully. 

“Weel, mem, jist ye put on yer black 
silk again the morn’s nicht, an’ come 
ower here aboot aucht o’clock, an’ ye’ll 
be able to jeedge by her ongang whan 
ye’re no 1 ’ the hoose gien there be ony- 
thing amiss wi’ Jean. There canna be 
muckle ill dune yet, that’s a comfort.” 

‘‘What ill, by [beyond] meddlin’ wi’ 
what doesna concern her, cud the wu- 
man du ?” said Miss Horn, with attempt- 
ed confidence. 

‘‘That ye sud ken best yersel’, mem. 
But Jean’s an awfu’ gossip, an’ a lady 
like yer cousin micht hae left dockiments 
ahint her ’at she wadna jist like to hear 
procleemt frae the hoo’setap. No ’at 
she ’ll ever hear onything mair, poor 
thing !” 

‘‘ What mean ye ?” cried Miss Horn, 
half frightened, half angry. 

‘‘Jist what I say, neither mair nor less,” 
returned Mrs. Mellis. ‘‘Miss Cam’ell 
may weel hae left letters for enstance, 
an’ hoo wad they fare in Jean’s ban’s ?” 

‘‘Whan I never had the hert to open 
her drawers!” exclaimed Miss Horn, en- 
raged at the very notion of the crime. 
‘‘/ hae 7iae feelin’s, thank God for the 
furnishin’ o’ me !” 

‘‘ I doobt Jean has her full share o’ a’ 
feelin’s belangin’ to fallen human na- 
tur’,” said Mrs. Mellis with a slow hori- 
zontal oscillation of her head. ‘‘ But ye 
jist come an’ see wi’ yer ain een, an’ 
syne jeedge for yersel’ : it’s no business 
o’ mine.” 

‘‘ I’ll come the nicht. Mistress Mellis. 
Only lat it be atween ’s twa.” 


‘‘ I can baud my tongue, mem — that is, 
frae a’ but ane. Sae lang’s merried fowk 
sleeps in ae bed, it’s ill to baud onything 
till a body’s sel’.” 

‘‘Mr. Mellis is a douce man, an’ I 
carena what he kens,” answered Miss 
Horn. 

She descended to the shop, and hav- 
ing bought bulk enough to account to 
Jean for her lengthened stay, for she had 
beyond a doubt been watching the door 
of the shop, she crossed the street, went 
up to her parlor and rang the bell. The 
same moment Jean’s head was popped 
in at the door : she had her reasons for 
always answering the bell like a bullet. 

‘‘ Mem ?” said Jean. 

‘‘Jean, I’m gaein’ oot the nicht. The 
minister oucht to be spoken till aboot 
the schuilmaister, honest man I Tak the 
lantren wi’ ye to the manse aboot ten 
o’clock : that ’ll be time eneuch.” 

‘‘Verra weel, mem. But I’m thinkin’ 
there’s a mune the nicht.” 

‘‘Naething but the doup o’ ane, Jean. 
It’s no to ca’ a mune. It’s a mercy we 
hae lantrens, an’ sic a sicht o’ cairds 
[gypsies] aboot !” 

‘‘Ay, the lantren lats them see whaur 
ye are, an’ hand oot o’ yer gait,” said 
Jean, who happened not to relish going 
that night. 

‘‘ Troth, wuman, ye ’re richt there,” re- 
turned her mistress with cheerful assent. 
‘‘The mair they see o’ ye, the less they 
’ll meddle wi’ ye — caird or cadger. 
Haud ye the licht upo’ yer ain face, lass, 
an’ there ’s feow ’ill hae the hert to luik 
again.” 

‘‘Haith, mem, there ’s twa sic-like o’ 
’s,” returned Jean bitterly, and bounced 
from the room. 

‘‘That’s true tu,” said her mistress; 
adding after the door was shut, ‘‘ It’s a 
peety we cudna haud on thegither.” 

‘‘ I’m gaein’ noo, Jean,” sh^ called into 
the kitchen as she crossed the threshold 
at eight o’clock. 

She turned toward the head of the 
street in the direction of the manse, but 
out of the range of Jean’s vision made 
a circuit, and entered Mr. Mellis’s house 
by the garden at the back. 

In the parlor she found a supper pre- 


MALCOLM. 


237 


pared to celebrate the renewal of old 
goodwill. The clear crystal on the table ; 
the new loaf, so brown without and so 
white within; the rich, clear-complex- 
ioned butter, undebased with a particle 
of salt; the self-satisfied hum of the 
kettle in attendance for the guidman’s 
toddy ; the bright fire, the golden glow 
of the brass fender in its red light, and 
the dish of boiled potatoes set down be- 
fore it under a snowy cloth ; the pink 
eggs, the yellow haddock and the crim- 
son strawberry jam, all combined their 
influences — each with its private pleas- 
ure wondroiisly heightened by the zest 
of a secret watch and the hope of dis- 
comfited mischief — to draw into a friend- 
ship what had hitherto been but a some- 
what insecure neighborship. From be- 
low came the sound of the shutters which 
Mr. Mellis was putting up a few minutes 
earlier than usual ; and when presently 
they sat down to the table, and after pro- 
logue judged suitable proceeded to enjoy 
the good things before them, an outside 
observer would have thought they had 
a pleasant evening, if not Time himself, 
by the forelock. 

But Miss Horn was uneasy. The 
thought of what Jean fnighthawQ already 
discovered had haunted her all day long, 
for her reluctance to open her cousin’s 
drawers had arisen mainly from the 
dread of finding justified a certain pain- 
ful suspicion which had haunted the 
whole of her intercourse with Grizel 
Campbell — namely, that the worm of a 
secret had been lying at the root of her 
life, the cause of all her illness, and of 
her death at last. She had fought with, 
out-argued and banished the suspicion a 
thousand times while she was with her, 
but evermore it had returned ; and now 
since her death, when again and again 
on the point of turning over her things, 
she had been always deterred by the 
fear not so much of finding what would 
pain herself as of discovering what Gri- 
zel would not wish her to know. Never 
was there a greater contrast between 
form and reality, between person and 
being, between manner and nature, than 
existed in Margaret Horn ; the shell was 
rough, the kernel absolute delicacy. Not 


for a moment had her suspicion altered 
her behavior to the gentle suffering crea- 
ture toward whom she had adopted the 
relation of an elder and stronger sister. 
To herself, when most satisfied of the ex- 
istence of a secret, she steadily excused 
her cousin’s withholdment of confidence 
on the ground of her own lack of feel- 
ings : how could she unbosom herself to 
such as she ? And now the thought of 
eyes like Jean’s exploring Grizel’s for- 
saken treasures made her so indignant 
and restless that she could hardly even 
pretend to enjoy her friends’ hospitality. 

Mrs. Mellis had so arranged the table 
and their places that she and her guest 
had only to lift their eyes to see the win- 
dow of their watch, while she punished 
her husband for the virile claim to great- 
er freedom from curiosity by seating him 
with his back to it, which made him 
every now and then cast a fidgety look 
over his shoulder — not greatly to the 
detriment of his supper, however. Their 
plan was to extinguish their own the 
moment Jean’s light should appear, and 
so watch without the risk of counter- 
discovery. 

“There she comes!’’ cried Mrs. Mel- 
lis ; and her husband and Miss Horn 
made such haste to blow out the candle 
that they knocked their heads together, 
blew in each other’s face, and the first 
time missed it. 

Jean approached the window with hers 
in her hand and pulled down the blind. 
But, alas I beyond the form of a close- 
bent elbow moving now and then across 
a corner of the white field, no shadow 
appeared upon it I 

Mis^ Horn rose. 

“ Sit doon, mem, sit doon ! ye hae nae- 
thing to gang upo’ yet,’’ exclaimed Mr. 
Mellis, who, being a baillie, was an au- 
thority. 

“ I can sit nae langer, Mr. Mellis,’’ re- 
turned Miss Horn. “I hae eneuch to 
gang upo’ as lang’s I hae my ain flure 
aneth my feet : the wuman has no busi- 
ness there. I’ll jist slip across an’ gang 
in as quaiet as a sowl intill a boady, but 
I s’ warran’ I s’ mak a din afore I come 
oot again.’’ With a grim diagonal nod 
she left the room. 


238 


MALCOLM. 


Although it was now quite dark, she 
yet deemed it prudent to go by the gar- 
den-gate into the back lane, and so cross 
the street lower down. Opening her own 
door noiselessly — thanks to Jean, who 
kept the lock well oiled for reasons of Mrs. 
Catanach’s — she closed it as silently, 
and, long-boned as she was, crept up the 
stair like a cat. The light was shining 
from the room : the door was ajar. She 
listened at it for a moment, and could 
distinguish nothing : then, fancying she 
heard the rustle of paper, could bear it 
no longer, pushed the door open and 
entered. There stood Jean, staring at 
her with fear-blanched face, a deep top- 
drawer open before her, and her hands 
full of things she was in the act of re- 
placing. Her terror culminated and its 
spell broke in a shriek when her mistress 
sprang upon her like a tigress. 

The watchers in the opposite house 
heard no cry, and only saw a heave of 
two intermingled black shadows across 
the blind, after which they neither heard 
nor saw anything more. The light went 
on burning until its final struggle with 
the darkness began, when it died with 
many a flickering throb. Unable at last 
to endure the suspense, now growing to 
fear, any longer, they stole across the 
street, opened the door and went in. 
Over the kitchen-fire, like an evil spirit 
of the squabby order, crouched Mrs. 
Catanach, waiting for Jean : no one else 
was to be found. 

About ten o’clock the same evening, 
as Mr. Graham sat by his peat-fire, some 
one lifted the latch of the outer door and 
knocked at the inner. His invitation to 
enter was answered by the appearance 
of Miss Horn, gaunt and grim as usual, 
but with more than the wonted fire 
gleaming from the shadowy cavern of 
her bonnet. She made no apology for 
the lateness of her visit, but seated her- 
self at the other side of the deal table, 
and laid upon it a paper parcel, which 
she proceeded to open with much delib- 
eration and suppressed plenitude. Hav- 
ing at length untied the string with the 
long fingers of a hand which, notwith- 
standing its evident strength, trembled 
so as almost to defeat the attempt, she 


took from the parcel a packet of old let- 
ters sealed with spangled wax, and push- 
ed it across the table to the sch(K)lmaster, 
saying, “ Hae, Sandy Graham ! Naebody 
but yersel’ has a richt to say what’s to 
be dune wi’ theiti^ 

He put out his hand and took them 
gently, with a look of sadness, but no 
surprise. 

“ Dinna think I hae been readin’ them, 
Sandy Graham. Na, na : I wad read nae 
honest man’s letters, be they written to 
wha they micht.” 

Mr. Graham was silent. 

“Ye’re a guid man, Sandy Graham,” 
Miss Horn resumed, “gien God ever took 
the pains to mak ane. Dinna think ony- 
thing atween you an’ her wad hae brocht 
me at this time o’ nicht to disturb ye in 
yer ain chaumer. Na, na. Whatever 
was atween you twa had an honest man 
intill’t, an’ I wad hae taen my time to 
gie ye back yer dockiments. But there’s 
some o’ anither mark here.” • 

As she spoke she drew from the parcel 
a small cardboard box broken at the 
sides and tied with a bit of tape. This 
she undid, and, turning the box upside 
down, tumbled its contents out on the 
table before him. “What mak ye o’ sic 
like as thae ?” she said. 

“ Do you want me to — ?” asked the 
schoolmaster with trembling voice. 

“ I jist div,” she answered. 

They were a number of little notes — 
some of but a word or two, and signed 
with initials ; others longer, and signed 
in full. Mr. Graham took up one of 
them reluctantly and unfolded it softly. 
He had hardly looked at it when he start- 
ed and exclaimed, “God have mercy! 
What can be the date of this ?” 

There was no date to it. He held it 
in his hand for a minute, his eyes fixed 
on the fire, and his features almost con- 
vulsed with his efforts at composure ; 
then laid it gently on the table, and said, 
but without turning his eyes to Miss 
Horn, “I cannot read this. You must 
not ask me. It refers doubtless to the 
time when Miss Campbell was governess 
to Lady Annabel. I see no end to be 
answered by my reading one of these 
letters.” 


MALCOLM. 


“ I daur say. Wha ever saw ’at wad- 
na luik ?” returned Miss Horn with a 
glance keen as an eagle’s into the thought- 
ful eyes of her friend. 

“Why not do by the writer of these as 
you have done by me ? Why not take 
them to him ?’’ suggested Mr. Graham. 

“That wad be but thoomb-fingert wark, 
to lat gang the en’ o’ yer hank,’’ exclaim- 
ed Miss Horn. 

“ I do not understand you, ma’am.’’ 

“Weel, I maun gar ye un’erstan’ me. 
There’s things whiles, Sandy Graham, 
’at ’s no easy to speyk aboot, but I hae 
nae feelin’s, an’ we’ll a’ be deid or lang, 
an’ that’s a comfort. Man ’at ye are, 
ye’re the only human bein’ I wad open 
my moo’ till aboot this maitter, an’ that’s 
’cause ye lo’e the memory o’ my puir 
lassie, Grizel Cam’ell.’’ ^ 

“ It is not her memory, it is herself I 
love,’’ said the schoolmaster with trem- 
bling voice. “ Tell me what you please : 
you may trust me.’’ 

“Gien I needit you to tell me that, I 


239 

wad trust ye asT wad the black dog wi’ 
butter. Hearken, Sandy Graham !’’ 

The result of her communication and 
their following conference was that she 
returned about midnight with a journey 
before her, the object of which was to 
place the letters in the safe-keeping of a 
lawyer friend in the neighboring county 
town. 

Long before she reached home Mrs. 
Catanach had left — not without commu- 
nication with her ally, in spite of a cer- 
tain precaution adoped by her mistress, 
the first thing the latter did when she 
entered being to take the key of the cel- 
lar-stairs from her pocket and release 
Jean, who issued crestfallen and miser- 
able, and was sternly dismissed to bed. 
The next day, however, for reasons of 
her own. Miss Horn permitted her to re- 
sume her duties about the house without 
remark, as if nothing had happened 
serious enough to render further meas- 
ures necessary. 



\ 


XIZ. 


CHAPTER LX. 

THE SACRAMENT, 

A bandoning all her remaining ef- 
fects to Jean’s curiosity — if indeed it 
were no worse demon that possessed her 
— Miss Horn, carrying a large reticule, 
betook herself to the Lossie Arms, to 
await the arrival of the mail coach from 
the west, on which she was pretty sure of 
a vacant seat. 

It was a still, frosty, finger-pinching 
dawn, and the rime lay thick wherever 
it could lie, but Miss Horn’s red nose 
was carried in front of her in a manner 
that suggested nothing but defiance to 
the fiercest attacks of cold. Declining 
the offered shelter of the landlady’s par- 
lor, she planted herself on the steps of 
the inn, and there stood until the sound 
of the guard’s horn came crackling 
through the frosty air, heralding the ap- 
parition of a flaming chariot fit for the 
sun-god himself, who was now lifting his 
red radiance above the horizon. Having 
none inside, the guard gallantly offered 
his one lady-passenger a place in the 
heart of his vehicle, but she declined the 
attention — to him, on the ground of pre- 
ferring the outside ; for herself, on the 
ground of uncertainty whether he had a 
right to bestow the privilege. But there 
was such a fire in her heart that no frost 
could chill her — such a bright bow in her 
west that the sun now rising in the world’s 
east was but a reflex of its splendor. 
True, the cloud against which it glowed 
was very dark with bygone wrong and 
suffering, but so much the more brilliant 
seemed the hope now arching the en- 
trance of the future. Still, although she 
never felt the cold, and the journey was 
but of a few miles, it seemed long and 
wearisome to her active spirit, which 
would gladly have sent her tall person 
striding along to relieve both by the dis- 
charge of the excessive generation of 
muscle-working electricity. 

240 


At length the coach drove into the 
town, and stopped at the Duff Arms. 
Miss Horn descended, straightened her 
long back with some difficulty, shook 
her feet, loosened her knees, and after a 
douceur to the guard more liberal than 
was customary in acknowledgment of 
the kindness she had been unable to 
accept, marched off with the stride of 
a grenadier to find her lawyer. 

Their interview did not relieve her of 
much of the time, which now hung upon 
her like a cloak of lead, and the earli- 
ness of the hour would not have deterred 
her from at once commencing a round 
of visits to the friends she had in the 
place ; but the gates of the lovely en- 
virons of Fife House stood open, and 
although there were no flowers now, and 
the trees were leafless, waiting in poverty 
and patience for their coming riches, they 
drew her with the offer of a plentiful 
loneliness and room. She accepted it, 
entered, and for two hours wandered 
about their woods and walks. 

Entering with her the well-known do- 
main, the thought meets me : What would 
be the effect on us men of such a peri- 
odical alternation between nothing and 
abundance as these woods undergo ? 
Perhaps in the endless variety of worlds 
there may be one in which that is among 
the means whereby its dwellers are saved 
from self and lifted into life — a world in 
which during the one-half of the year 
they walk in state, in splendor, in bounty, 
and during the other are plunged in pen- 
ury and labor. 

Such speculations were not in Miss 
Horn’s way, but she was better than the 
loftiest of speculations, and we will fol- 
low her. By and by she came out of 
the woods, and found herself on the 
banks of the Wan Water, a broad, fine 
river, here talking in wide-rippled inno- 
cence from bank to bank, there lying 
silent and motionless and gloomy, as if 


MALCOLM, 


241 


all the secrets of the drowned since the 
creation of the world lay dim-floating in 
its shadowy bosom. In great sweeps it 
sought the ocean, and the trees stood 
back from its borders, leaving a broad 
margin of grass between, as if the better 
to see it go. Just outside the grounds, 
and before reaching the sea, it passed 
under a long bridge of many arches — 
then, trees and grass and flowers and all 
greenery left behind, rushed through a 
waste of storm-heaped pebbles into the 
world-water. Miss Horn followed it out 
of the grounds and on to the beach. 

Here its channel was constantly chang- 
ing. Even while she stood gazing at its 
rapid rush its bank of pebbles and sand 
fell almost from under her feet. But her 
thoughts were so busy that she scarcely 
observed even what she saw, and hence 
it was not strange that she should be un- 
aware of having been followed and watch- 
ed all the way. Now from behind a tree, 
now from a corner of the mausoleum, 
now from behind a rock, now over the 
parapet of the bridge, the mad laird had 
watched her. From a heap of shingle 
on the opposite side of the Wan Water 
he was watching her now. Again and 
again he made a sudden movement as 
if to run and accost her, but had always 
drawn back again and concealed him- 
self more carefully than before. 

At length she turned in the direction 
of the town. It was a quaint old place 
— a royal burgh for five centuries, with 
streets irregular and houses of much in- 
dividuality. Most of the latter were hum- 
ble in appearance, bare and hard in form 
and gray in hue ; but there were curious 
corners, low archways, uncompromising 
gables, some with corbel-steps — now and 
then an outside stair, a delicious little 
dormer window or a Gothic doorway, 
sometimes with a bit of carving over it. 

With the bent head of the climber Miss 
Horn was walking up a certain street, 
called from its precipitousness the Strait 
(that is. Difficult) Path — an absolute 
Hill of Difficulty — when she was accost- 
ed by an elderly man who stood in the 
doorway of one of the houses. 

“ Ken ye wha ’s yon watchin’ ye frae 
the tap 0’ the brae, mem ?” he said. 

16 


Miss Horn looked up : there was no 
one there. 

“That’s it — he’s awa’ again. That’s 
the w’y he’s been duin’ this last hoor, 
at least, to 7 ny knowledge. I saw him 
watchin’ ilka mov’ ye made, mem, a’ 
the time ye was doon upo’ the shore ; 
an’ there he is noo, or was a meenute 
ago, at the heid o’ the brae, glowerin’ 
the een oot o’ ’s heid at ye, mem,’’ 

“ Div ye ken him ?’’ asked Miss Horn. 

“No, mem, ’cep’ by sicht o’ ee : he 
hasna been lang aboot the toon. Some 
fowk says he’s dementit ; but he’s unco 
quaiet, speyks to nobody, an’ gien ony- 
body speyk to him jist rins. Cud he be 
kennin’ you, no ? Ye’re a stranger here, 
mem ?’’ 

“No sic a stranger, John,’’ returned 
Miss Horn, calling the man by his name, 
for she recognized him as the beadle of 
the parish church. “What’s the body 
like ?’’ 

“A puir, wee, hump-backit cratur, wi’ 
the face o’ a gentleman.’’ 

“I ken him weel,’’ said Miss Horn. 
“ He is a gentleman, gien ever God made 
ane. But he’s sair afflickit. Whaur does 
he lie at nicht, can ye tell me ?’’ 

“ I ken naething aboot him, mem, 
by what comes o’ seein’ him sic like ’s 
the day, an’ ance teetin’ [peermg) in at 
the door o’ the kirk. I wad hae weised 
him till a seat, but the moment I luikit 
at him awa’ he ran. He’s unco cheenged, 
though, sin’ the first time I saw him.’’ 

Since he lost Phemy fear had been 
slaying him. No one knew where he 
slept, but in the daytime he haunted the 
streets, judging them safer than the fields 
or woods. The moment any one accost- 
ed him, however, he fled like the wind. 
Pie had “no art to find the mind’s con- 
struction in the face,’’ and not knowing 
whom to trust, he distrusted all. Hu- 
manity was good in his eyes, but there 
was no man. The vision of Miss Horn 
was like the day-spring from on high to 
him : with her near the hosts of the Lord 
seemed to encamp around him ; but the 
ojie word he had heard her utter about 
his back had caused in him an invinci- 
ble repugnance to appearing before her, 
and hence it was that at a distance he 


242 


MALCOLM, 


had haunted her steps without nearer 
approach. 

There was indeed a change upon him. 
His clothes hung about him — not from 
their own ragged condition only, but 
also from the state of skin and bone to 
which he was reduced, his hump show- 
ing like a great peg over which they had 
been carelessly cast. Half the round of 
his eyes stood out from his face, whose 
pallor betokened the ever-recurring rush 
of the faintly-sallying troops back to the 
citadel of the heart. He had always 
been ready to run, but now he looked as 
if nothing but weakness and weariness 
kept him from running always. Miss 
Horn had presently an opportunity of 
marking the sad alteration. 

For ere she reached the head of the 
Strait Path she heard sounds as of boys 
at play, and coming out on the level of 
the High street, saw a crowd, mostly of 
little boys, in the angle made by a gar- 
den-wall with a house whose gable stood 
halfway across the pavement. It being 
Saturday, they had just left school in all 
the exuberance of spirits to which a half 
. holiday gives occasion. In most of them 
the animal nature was, for the time at 
least, far wider awake than the human, 
and their proclivity toward the sport of 
the persecutor was strong. To them any 
'living thing that looked at once odd and 
helpless was an outlaw — a creature to be 
.-tormented, or at best hunted beyond the 
visible world. A meagre cat, an over- 
Ted pet spaniel, a ditchless frog, a horse 
-whose days hung over the verge of the 
-knacker’s yard — each was theirs in vir- 
ftue of the amusement latent in it, which 
> it was their business to draw out ; but 
• of all such property an idiot would yield 
the most, and a hunchback idiot, such as 
was the laird in their eyes, was absolute- 
ly invaluable — beyond comparison the 
best game in the known universe. When 
he left Portlossie the laird knew pretty 
well what risks he ran, although he pre- 
ferred even them to the dangers he hoped 
by his flight to avoid. It was he whom 
ithe crowd in question surrounded. 

They had begun by rough teasing, to 
which he had responded with smiles — a 
result which did not at all gratify them, 


their chief object being to enrage him. 
They had therefore proceeded to small 
torments, and were ready to go on to 
worse, their object being with the laird 
hard to compass. Unhappily, there were 
amongst them two or three bigger boys. 

The moment Miss Horn descried what 
they were about, she rushed into ,the 
midst of them like a long bolt from a 
catapult, and, scattering them right and 
left from their victim, turned and stood 
in front of him, regarding his persecutors 
with defiance in her flaming eye and 
vengeance in her indignant nose. But 
there was about Miss Horn herself enough 
of the peculiar to mark her also, to the 
superficial observer, as the natural prey 
of boys ; and the moment the first bil- 
low of consternation had passed and 
sunk, beginning to regard her as she 
stood, the vain imagination awoke in 
these young lords of misrule. They 
commenced their attack upon her by re- 
suming it upon her protege. She spread 
out her skirts, far from voluminous, to 
protect him as he cowered behind them, 
and so long as she was successful in 
shielding him her wrath smouldered, but 
powerfully. At length one of the bigger 
boys, creeping slyly up behind the front 
row of smaller ones, succeeded in poking 
a piece of iron rod past her and drawing 
a cry from the laird. Out blazed the 
lurking flame. The boy had risen, and 
was now attempting to prosecute like an 
ape what he had commenced like a snake. 
Inspired by the God of armies, the Lord 
of hosts, she rushed upon him and struck 
him into the gutter. He fell in the very 
spot w-here he had found his weapon, 
and there he lay. The Christian Ama- 
zon turned to the laird : overflowing with 
compassion, she stooped and kissed his 
forehead, then took him by the hand to 
lead him away. But most of the enemy 
had gathered around their' fallen com- 
rade, and, seized with some anxiety as to 
his condition, Miss Horn approached the 
group : the instant she turned toward it, 
the laird snatched his hand from hers, 
darted away like a hunting spider, and 
•shot down the Strait Path to the low 
street : by the time his protectress had 
looked over the heads of the group, seen 


MALCOLM, 


243 


that the young miscreant was not seri- 
ously injured, and requested him to take 
that for meddling with a helpless inno- 
cent, the object of her solicitude, whom 
she supposed standing behind her, was 
nowhere to be seen. Twenty voices, now 
obsequious, were lifted to acquaint her 
with the direction in which he had gone ; 
but it was vain to attempt following him, 
and she pursued her way, somewhat sore 
at his want of faith in her, to the house 
of a certain relative, a dressmaker, whom 
she visited as often as she went to Duff 
Harbor. 

Now, Miss Forsyth was one of a small 
sect of worshipers which had, not many 
years before, built a chapel in the town — 
a quiet, sober, devout company, differing 
from their neighbors in nothing deep- 
ly touching the welfare of' humanity. 
Their chief fault was that, attributing to 
comparative trifles a hugely dispropor- 
tionate value, they would tear the gar- 
ment in pieces rather than yield their 
notion of the right way of wrapping it 
together. 

It so happened that the next morning 
a minister famous in the community was 
to preach to them, on which ground Miss 
Forsyth persuaded her relative to stop 
over the Sunday and go with her to their 
chapel. Bethinking herself next that 
her minister had no sermon to prepare, 
she took Miss Horn to call upon him. 

Mr. Bigg was one of those men whose 
faculty is always under-estimated by their 
acquaintances and over - estimated by 
their friends : to overvalue him was impos- 
sible. He was not merely of the salt of the 
earth, but of the leaven of the kingdom, 
contributing more to the true life of the 
world than many a thousand far more 
widely known and honored. Such as 
this man are the chief springs of thought, 
feeling, inquiry, action in their neighbor- 
hood ; they radiate help and breathe 
comfort; they reprove, they counsel, 
they sympathize; in a word, they are 
doorkeepers of the house of God. Con- 
stantly upon its threshold, and every 
moment pushing the door to peep in, 
they let out radiance enough to keep 
the hearts of men believing in the light. 
They make an atmosphere about them 


in which spiritual things can thrive, and 
out of their school often come men who 
do greater things — better they cannot do 
than they. 

•Although a separatist as to externals, 
he was in heart a most catholic man — 
would have found himself far too cath- 
olic for the community over which he 
presided had its members been capable 
of understanding him. Indeed, he had 
with many — although such was the force 
of his character that no one dared a word 
to that effect in his hearing — the reputa- * 
tion of being lax in his ideas of what 
constituted a saving faith ; and most of 
the sect being very narrow-minded, if 
not small-hearted, in their limitations of 
the company fitly partaking of the last 
supper of our Lord — requiring proof of 
intellectual accord with themselves as to 
the how and why of many things, espe- 
cially in regard of what they called the 
plan of salvation — he was generally 
judged to be misled by the deceitful 
kindliness of the depraved human heart 
in requiring as the ground of communion 
only such an uplook to Jesus as, when 
on earth, Jesus himself had responded to 
with healing. He was larger - hearted, 
and therefore larger -minded, than his 
people. 

In the course of their conversation 
Miss Forsyth recounted, with some hu- 
mor, her visitor’s prowess on behalf of 
the laird — much to honest Mr. Bigg’s 
delight. 

“What ither cud I du?’’ said Miss 
Horn apologetically. “But I doobt I 
strack ower sair. Maybe ye wadna ob- 
jec’, sir, to gang and speir efter the lad- 
die, and gie him some guid advice ?’’ 

“ I’ll do that,’’ returned Mr. Bigg. “Are 
we to have the pleasure of your company 
in our conventicle to-morrow?’’ he add- 
ed after a little pause. “ Dr. Blair is go- 
ing to preach.’’ 

“Will ye hae me, Mr. Bigg?’’ 

“Most willingly, ma’am; and we’ll be 
still better pleased if you’ll sit down with 
us to the Lord’s table afterward.’’ 

“ I gang to the perris kirk, ye ken ?’’ 
said Miss Horn, supposing the good man 
unaware of the fact. 

“Oh, I know that, ma’am. But don’t 


244 


MALCOLM. 


you think — as we shall, I trust, sit down 
together to his heavenly supper — it would 
be a good preparation to sit down to- 
gether, once at least, to his earthly sup- 
per first ?” 

“ I didna ken ’at ye wad hae ony but 
yer ain fowk. I hae aften thoucht, my- 
sel’, it was jist the ae thing ony Christi-an 
sud be ready to du wi’ ony ither. Is ’t 
a new thing wi’ ye to hand open hoose 
this gait, sir, gien I may tak the leeberty 
to speir?” 

“We don’t exactly keep open house. 
We wouldn’t like to have any one with 
us who would count it poor fare. But 
still less would we like to exclude one 
of the Lord’s friends. If that is a new 
thing, it ought to be an old one. You be- 
lieve in Jesus Christ, don’t you, ma’am ?’’ 

“ I dinna ken whether I believe in Him 
as ye wad ca’ believin’ or no : there ’s 
sic a heap o’ things broucht to the fore 
noo-a-days ’at I canna richtly say I un- 
’erstan’. But as He dee’d for me, I wad 
dee for Him. Raither nor say I didna 
ken Him I wad hing aside Him. Peter 
an’ a’, I canna say less.’’ 

Mr. Bigg’s eyes began to smart, and 
he turned away his head. 

“Gien that ’ll du wi’ ye,’’ Miss Horn 
went on, “ an’ ye mean no desertion o’ 
the kirk o’ my father, an’ his fathers afore 
him, I wad willin’ly partak wi’ ye.’’ 

“You’ll be welcome. Miss Horn — as 
welcome as any of my own flock.’’ 

“Weel, noo, that I ca’ Christi-an,” 
said Miss Horn, rising. “An’ ’deed I 
cud wuss,” she added, “’at in oor ain 
kirk we had mair opportunity, for ance 
i’ the twalmonth ’s no verra aften to tak 
up the thouchts ’at belang to the holy 
ord’nance.” 

The next day, after a powerful ser- 
mon from a man who, although in high 
esteem, was not for moral worth or heav- 
enly insight to be compared with him 
whose place he took, they proceeded to 
the celebration of the Lord’s Supper 
after the fashion of that portion of the 
Church universal. 

The communicants sat in several long 
pews facing the communion-table, which 
was at the foot of the pulpit. After the 
reading of Saint Paul’s account of the 


institution of the Lord’s Supper, accom- 
panied by prayers and addresses, the 
deacons carried the bread to the people, 
handing a slice to the first in each pew : 
each person in turn broke off a portion, 
and handed what remained to the next. 
Thus they divided it among themselves. 

It so happened that in moving up to 
the communion-seats Miss Forsyth and 
Miss Horn were the last to enter one of 
them, and Miss Horn, very needlessly 
insisting on her custom of having her 
more capable ear toward her friend, oc- 
cupied the place next the passage. 

The service had hardly commenced 
when she caught sight of the face of the 
mad laird peeping in at the door, which 
was in the side of the building near where 
she sat. Their eyes met. With a half- 
repentant, half-apologetic look, he crept 
in, and, apparently to get as near his 
protectress as he could, sat down in the 
entrance of an empty pew, just opposite 
the one in which she was seated, on the 
other side of the narrow passage. His 
presence attracted little notice, for it was 
quite usual for individuals of the con- 
gregation who were not members of the 
church to linger on the outskirts of the 
company as spectators. 

By the time the piece of bread reached 
Miss Horn from the other end it was 
but a fragment. She broke it in two, 
and, reserving one part for herself, in 
place of handing the remnant to the dea- 
con who stood ready to take it, stretched 
her arm across the passage and gave it 
to Mr. Stewart, who had been watching 
the proceedings intently. He received 
it from her hand, bent his head over it 
devoutly, and ate it, unconscious of the 
scandalized looks of the deacon, who 
knew nothing of the miserable object 
thus accepting rather than claiming a 
share in the common hope of men. 

When the cup followed the deacon 
was on the alert, ready to take it at once 
from the hands of Miss Horn. But as 
it left her lips she rose, grasping it in 
both hands, and with the dignity of a 
messenger of the Most High, before 
which the deacon drew back, bore it to 
the laird, and having made him drink 
the little that was left, yielded it to the 


MALCOLM, 


245 


conservator of holy privileges, with the 
words, “ Hoots, man ! the puir body 
never had a taste o’ the balm o’ Gilead 
in a’ ’s persecutit life afore.” 

The liberality of Mr. Bigg had not 
been lost upon her : freely she had re- 
ceived, freely she gave. What was good 
must, because it was good, be divided 
with her neighbor. It was a lawless act. 

As soon as the benediction was spoken 
the laird slipped away, but as he left the 
seat Miss Horn heard him murmur, ” Eh, 
the bonny man ! the bonny man !” He 
could hardly have meant the deacon. 
He might have meant Mr. Bigg, who 
had concluded the observance with a 
simple and loving exhortation. 


CHAPTER LXI. 

MISS HORN AND THE PIPER. 

When Miss Horn bethought herself 
that night, in prospect of returning home 
the next day, that she had been twice in 
the company of the laird, and had not 
even thought of asking him about Phemy, 
she reproached herself not a little ; and 
it was with shame that she set out, im- 
mediately on her arrival, to tell Malcolm 
that she had seen him. No one at the 
House being able to inform her where 
he was at the moment, sKe went on to 
Duncan’s cottage. There she found the 
piper, who could not tell where his boy 
was, but gave her a hearty welcome and 
offered her a cup of tea, which, as it was 
now late in the afternoon. Miss Horn 
gladly accepted. As he bustled about 
to prepare it, refusing all assistance from 
his guest, he began to open his mind to 
her on a subject much in his thoughts — 
namely, Malcolm’s inexplicable aversion 
to Mrs. Stewart. 

“Ta nem of Stewart will pe a nople 
worrt, mem,” he sa'id. 

‘‘ It’s guid eneuch to ken a body by,” 
answered Miss Horn. 

” If ta poy will pe a Ste,wart,” he went 
on, heedless of the indifference of her 
remark, ‘‘who’ll pe knowing put he’ll 
may pe of ta plood royal ?” 

‘‘ There didnh leuk to be muckle roy- 
alty aboot auld John, honest man, wha 


cudna rule a wife, though he had but 
ane,” returned Miss Horn. 

“ If you ’ll please, mem, ton’t you’ll pe 
too sherp on ta poor man whose wife 
will not pe ta coot wife. If ta wife will 
pe ta paad wife, she will pe ta paad wife 
however ; and ta poor man will pe hafing 
ta paad wife and ta paad plame of it too ; 
and tat will pe more as ’ll pe fair, mem.” 

‘‘ ’Deed, ye never said a truer word, 
Maister MacPhail,” assented Miss Horn. 
‘‘ It’s a mercy ’at a lone wuman like me, 
wha has a maisterfu’ temper o’ her ain, 
an’ no feelin’s, was never putten to the 
temptation o’ occkypeein’ sic a perilous 
position. I doobt gien auld John had 
been merried upo’ me, I micht hae put- 
ten on the wrang claes some mornin’ 
mysel’, an’ maybe had ill gettin’ o’ them 
aff again.” 

The old man was silent, and Miss Horn 
resumed the main subject of their con- 
versation. ‘‘But though he michtna ob- 
jec’ till a father ’at he wasna jist Hector 
or Golia’ o’ Gath,” she said, ‘‘ye canna 
wonner ’at the yoong laad no carin’ to 
hae sic a mither.” 

“And what would pe ta harm with ta 
mother ? Will she not pe a coot woman, 
and a coot letty more to ta bargain ?” 

“Ye ken what fowk says till her guide- 
ship o’ her son ?” 

“Yes, put tat will pe ta lies of ta peo- 
ples. ^ Ta peoples wass always telling 
lies.” 

“Weel, allooin’, it’s a peety ye sudna 
ken, supposin’ him to be hers, hoo sma’ 
fowk bauds the chance o’ his bein’ a 
Stewart, for a’ that.” 

“She ’ll not pe comprestanding you,” 
said Duncan, bewildered. 

“ He’s a wise son ’at kens his ain fa- 
ther,” remarked Miss Horn, with more 
point than originality. “The leddy nev- 
er bore the best o’ characters, as far ’s 
my memory taks me, an’ that’s back 
afore John an’ her was merried, ony 
gate. Na, na, John Stewart never took 
a dwaum ’cause Ma’colm MacPhail was 
upo’ the ro’d.” 

Miss Horn was sufficiently enigmati- 
cal, but her meaning had at length, more 
through his own reflection than her ex- 
position, dawned upon Duncan. He 


246 


MALCOLM. 


leaped up with a Gaelic explosion of 
concentrated force, and cried, “ Ta wo- 
man is not pe no mothers to Tuncan’s 
poy !” 

“Huly, huly, Mr. MacPhaill” inter- 
posed Miss Horn with good-natured re- 
venge, “it may be naething but fowk’s 
lees, ye ken.” 

“Ta woman tat ta peoples will pe tell- 
ing lies of her wass not pe ta mother of 
her poy Malcolm. Why tidn’t ta poy 
tell her ta why tat he wouldn’t pe haf- 
ing her ?’’ 

“Ye wadna hae him spread an ill re- 
port o’ his ain mither?’’ 

“Put she’ll not pe his mother, and 
you’ll not pelieve it, mem.’’ 

“Ye canna priv that — you nor him, 
aither.’’ 

“ It will pe more as would kill her poy 
to haf a woman like tat to ta mother of 
him.” 

“ It wad be nearhan’ as ill ’s haein’ her 
for a wife,” assented Miss Horn, “but no 
freely {quite ) she added. 

The old man sought the door, as if for 
a breath of air, but as he went he blun- 
dered, and felt about as if he had just 
been struck blind: ordinarily, he walk- 
ed, in his own house at least, as if he 
saw every inch of the way. Presently 
he returned and resumed his seat. 

“Was the bairn laid mither-nakit in- 
till yer ban’s, Maister MacPhail ?”. asked 
Miss Horn, who had been meditating. 

“Och, no ! he wass his clo’es on,” an- 
swered Duncan. 

“ Hae ye ony o’ them left ?” she asked 
again. 

“ Inteet not,” answered Duncan — “yes, 
inteet not.” 

“Ye lay at the Salmon, didna ye?” 

“Yes, mem, and they was coot to 
her.” 

“ Wha dressed the bairn till ye ?” 

“Och! she’ll trest him herself,” said 
Duncan, still jealous of the women who 
had nursed the child. 

“But no aye ?” suggested Miss Horn. 

“Mistress Partan will be toing a coot 
teal of tressing him sometimes. Mistress 
Partan is a coot ’oman when she ’ll pe 
coot — ferry coot when she ’ll pe coot.” 

Here Malcolm entered, and Miss Horn 


told him what she had seen of the laird 
and gathered concerning him. 

“That luiks ill for Phemy,” remarked 
Malcolm, when she had described his 
forlorn condition. “She canna be wi’ 
’im, or he wadna be like that. Hae ye 
onything by w’y o’ coonsel, mem ?” 

“ I wad coonsel a word wi’ the laird 
himseP, gien ’t be to be gotten. He 
mayna ken what ’s happened her, but 
he may tell ye the last he saw o’ her, an’ 
that maun be mair nor ye ken.” 

“He’s ta’en sic a doobt o’ me ’at I’m 
feart it ’ll be hard to come at him, -an’ 
still harder to come at speech o’ ’im, for 
whan he’s frichtit he can hardly muv ’s 
jawbane, no to say speyk. I maun try, 
though, and du my best. Ye think he’s 
lurkin’ aboot Fife Hoose, div ye, mem?” 

“ He’s been seen there-awa’ this while 
— aff an’ on.” 

“Weel, I s’ jist gang an’ put on my 
fisher-claes, an’ set oot at ance. I maun 
baud ower to Scaurnose first, though, to 
lat them ken ’at he’s been gotten sicht 
o’. It ’II be but sma’ comfort, I doobt.” 

“Malcolm, my son,” interjected Dun- 
can, who had been watching for the con- 
versation to afford him an opening, " if 
you’ll pe meeting any one will caal you 
ta son of tat woman, gif him a coot plow 
in ta face, for you’ll pe no son of hers, 
efen if she ’irproof it — no more as her- 
self. If you’ll pe her son, old Tuncan 
will pe tisown you for efer and efermore, 
amen.” 

“What’s broucht you to this, daddie ?” 
asked Malcolm, who, ill as he liked the 
least allusion to the matter, could not 
help feeling curious, and indeed almost 
amused. 

“ Nefer you mind. Miss Horn will pe 
hafing coot reasons tat Mistress Stewart 
’ill not can pe your mother.” 

Malcolm turned to Miss Horn. 

“I’ve said naething to Maister Mac- 
Phail but what I’ve said mair nor ance 
to yersel’, laddie,” she replied to the 
eager questioning of his eyes. “Gang 
yer wa’s. The trowth maun cow the lee 
i’ the lang rin. Aff wi’ ye to Blew Peter.” 

When Malcolm reached Scaurnose he 
found Phemy’s parents in a sad state. 
Joseph had returned that morning from 


MALCOLM. 


247 


a fruitless search in a fresh direction, and 
reiterated disappointment seemed to have 
at length overcome Annie’s endurance, 
for she had taken to her bed. Joseph 
was sitting before the fire on a three- 
legged stool, rocking himself to and fro 
in a dull agony. When he heard Mal- 
colm’s voice he jumped to his feet, and 
a flash of hope shot from his eyes ; but 
when he had heard all he sat down again 
without a word, and began rocking him- 
self as before. 

Mrs. Mair was lying in the darkened 
closet, where, the door being partly open, 
she had been listening with all her might, 
and was now weeping afresh. Joseph 
was the first to speak : still rocking him-^ 
self with hopeless oscillation, he said, in 
* a strange muffled tone which seemed to 
come from somewhere else, “ Gien 1 kent 
she was weel deid 1 wadna care. It’s 
no like a father to be sittin’ here, but 
whaur ’ll I gang neist ? The wife thinks 
I micht be duin’ something : I kenna 
what to du. This last news is waur nor 
nane. I hae maist nae faith left, Ma’- 
colm man ” — and with a bitter cry he 
started to his feet — ‘‘I ’maist dinna be- 
lieve there’s a God ava’. It disna luik 
like it — dis ’t noo ?” 

There came an answering cry from the 
closet : Annie rushed out, half undress- 
ed, and threw her arms about her hus- 
band. “Joseph! Joseph!’’ she said, in 
a voice hard with agony — almost more 
dreadful than a scream — “gien ye speyk 
like that ye’ll drive me mad. Lat the 
lassie gang, but lea’ me my God.’’ 

Joseph pushed her gently away, turn- 
ed from her, fell on his knees and moaned 
out, “O God! gien Thoo has her we s’ 
neither greit nor grum’le, but dinna tak 
the faith frae ’s.’’ 

He remained on his knees, silent, with 
his head against the chimney-jamb. His 
wife crept away to her closet. 

“Peter,” said Malcolm, “I’m gaein’ 
aff the nicht to luik for the laird, and 
see gien he can tell ’s onything aboot 
her : wadna ye better come wi’ me ?” 

To the heart of the father it was as the 
hope of the resurrection ,to the world. 
The same moment he was on his feet 
and taking down his bonnet; the next 


he disappeared in the closet, and Mal- 
colm heard the tinkling of the money in 
the lidless teapot ; then out he came with 
a tear on his face and a glimmer in his 
eyes. 

The sun was down, and a bone-pier- 
cing chill, incarnate in the vague mist 
that haunted the ground, assailed them 
as they left the cottage. The sea moaned 
drearily. A smpke seemed to ascend 
from the horizon half to the zenith — 
something too thin for cloud, too black 
for vapor : above that the stars were be- 
ginning to shine. Joseph shivered and 
struck his hands against his shoulders. 
“Care’s cauldrife,” he said, and strode 
on. 

Almost in silence they walked together 
to the county-town, put up at a little inn 
near the river, and at once began to 
make inquiries. Not a few persons had 
seen the laird at different times, but none 
knew where he slept or chiefly haunted. 
There was nothing for it but to set out 
in the morning, and stray hither and 
thither on the chance of somewhere find- 
ing him. 


CHAPTER LXII. 

THE CUTTLEFISH AND THE CRAB. « 

Although the better portion of the 
original assembly had forsaken the Bail- 
lies’ Barn, there was still a regular gath- 
ering in it as before, and if possible even 
a greater manifestation of zeal for the 
conversion of sinners. True, it might 
not be clear to an outsider that they al- 
ways made a difference between being 
converted and joining their company, so 
ready were they to mix up the two in 
their utterances ; and the results of what 
they counted conversion were sometimes^ 
such as the opponents of their proceed- 
ings would have had them : the arrogant 
became still more arrogant, and the 
greedy more greedy ; the tongues of the 
talkative went yet faster, and the gad- 
abouts were yet seldomer at home ; while 
there was such a superabundance of pri- 
vate judgment that it overflowed the cis- 
terns of their own concerns, and invaded 
the walled gardens of other people’s mo- 


248 


MALCOLM. 


lives. Yet, notwithstanding, the good 
people got good, if the other sort got 
evil ; for the meek shall inherit the earth, 
even when the priest ascends the throne 
of Augustus. No worst thing ever done 
in the name of Christianity, no vilest cor- 
ruption of the Church, can destroy the 
eternal fact that the core of it is the heart 
of Jesus. Branches innumerable may 
have to be lopped off and cast into the 
fire, yet the word “ I am the Vine” re- 
maineth. 

The demagogues had gloried in the 
expulsion of such men as Jeames Gentle 
and Blue Peter, and were soon rejoiced 
by the return of Bow-o’-meal — after a 
season of backsliding to the flesh-pots 
of Egypt, as they called the services of 
the parish church — to the bosom of the 
Barn, where he soon was again one of 
the chief amongst them. Meantime, 
the circles of their emanating influence 
continued to spread, until at length they 
reached the lower classes of the upper 
town, of whom a few began to go to the 
Barn. Amongst them, for reasons best 
known to herself, though they might be 
surmised by such as really knew her; 
was Mrs. Catanach. I do not know that 
she ever professed repentance and con- 
version, but for a time she attended pret- 
ty often. Possibly, business considera- 
tions had something to do with it. As- 
suredly, the young preacher, though he 
still continued to exhort, did so with fail- 
ing strength, and it was plain to see that 
he was going rapidly : the exercise of 
the second of her twin callings might be 
required. She could not, however, have 
been drawn by any large expectations as 
vto the honorarium. Still, she would gain 
■what she prized even more — a position 
for the moment at the heart of affairs, 
■with its excelling chances of hearing and 
■ overhearing. Never had a lover of old 
books half the delight in fitting together 
,a rare volume from scattered portions 
;^picked up in his travels that Mrs. Cata- 
nach found in vitalizing stray remarks, 
arranging odds and ends of news, and 
cementing the m^ny fragments, with the 
help of the babblings of gossip, into a 
plausible whole. Intellectually consid- 
ered, her special pursuit was inasmuch 


the nobler as the faculties it brought into 
exercise were more delicate and various ; 
and if her devotion to the minutiae of 
biography had no high end in view, it 
never caused her to lose sight of what 
ends she had by involving her in opin- 
ions, prejudices or disputes : however she 
might break out at times, her general 
policy was to avoid quarreling. There 
was a strong natural antagonism between 
her and the Partaness, but she had nev- 
er shown the least dislike to her, and 
that although Mrs. Findlay had never 
lost an opportunity of manifesting hers 
to the midwife. Indeed, having gained 
a pretext by her ministrations to Lizzy 
when overcome by the suggestions of the 
dog-sermon, Mrs. Catanach had assayed 
an approach to her mother, and not with- 
out success. After the discovery of the 
physical cause of Lizzy’s ailment, how- 
ever, Mrs. Findlay had sought, by might 
of rude resolve, to break loose from the 
encroaching acquaintanceship, but had 
found, as yet, that the hard-shelled crab 
was not a match for the glutinous cuttle- 
fish. 

On the evening of the Sunday follow- 
ing the events related in the last chapter, 
Mrs. Catanach had, not without difficulty, 
persuaded Mrs. Findlay to accompany 
her to the Baillies’ Barn with the prom- 
ise of a wonderful sermon from a new 
preacher — a ploughman on an inland 
farm. That she had an object in desir- 
ing her company that night may seem 
probable from the conversation which 
arose as they plodded their way thither 
along the sands. 

” I h’ard a queer tale aboot Meg Horn 
at Duff Harbor the ither day,” said the 
midwife, speaking thus disrespectfully 
both to ease her own heart and to call 
forth the feelings of her companion, who 
also, she knew, disliked Miss Horn. 

‘‘Ay ! An’ what micht that be ?” 

‘‘ But she’s maybe a freen’ o’ yours. 
Mistress Findlay ? Some fowk likes her, 
though I canna say I’m ane o’ them.” 

‘‘Freen’ o’ mine!” exclaimed the Par- 
taness. ‘‘We gree like twa bills {bulls) 
i’ the same park.” 

‘‘ I wadna wonner, for they tellt me ’at 
saw her fechtin’ i’ the High street wi’ a 


MALCOLM. 


249 


muckle loon nearhan’ as big ’s hersel’ ; 
an’ haith ! but Meg had the best o’ ’t, 
an’ dang him intil the gutter, an’ maist 
fellt him. An’ that’s Meg Horn !” 

“She had been at the drink. But I 
never h’ard it laid till her afore.’’ 

“Didna ye, than ? Weel, I’m no say- 
in’ onything: that’s what I h’ard.’’ 

“Ow! it’s like eneuch. She was bul- 
lyraggin’ at me nae langer ago nor thes- 
treen ; but I doobt I sent her awa’ wi’ a 
flech [Jiea) in her lug.’’ 

“Whaten a craw had she to pluck wi’ 
you, no ?’’ 

“ Ow, fegs ! ye wad hae ta’en her for 
a thief-catcher, and me for the thief. 
She wad threpe {insist') ’at I bude to 
hae keepit some o’ the duds ’at happit 
Ma’colm MacPhail, the reprobat, whan 
first he cam to the Seaton — a puir scraich- 
in’ brat, as reid ’s a bilet lobster. Wae 
’s me ’at ever he was creatit ! It jist 
drives me horn-daft to think ’at ever he 
got the breist o’ me. ’At he sud sair 
{serve) me sae ! But I s’ hae a grip o’ 
’im yet, or my name ’s no — what they 
ca’ me.’’ 

“It’s the w’y o’ the warl’. Mistress 
Findlay. What cud ye expec’ o’ ane 
born in sin an’ brought furth in ineequi- 
ty ?’’ — a stock phrase of Mrs. Catanach’s, 
glancing at her profession, and embracing 
nearly the whole of her belief. 

“It’s a true word. The mair’s the 
peety he sud hae hed the milk o’ an 
honest wuman upo’ the tap o’ that !’’ 

“ But what cud the auld runt be efter ? 
What was business wi’ ’t ? She never 
did onything for the bairn.’’ 

“Na, no she I She never had the 
chance, guid or ill. Ow ! doobtless it 
wad be anent what they ca’ the eeden- 
tryfeein’ o’ ’im to the leddy o’ Gersefell. 
She had sent her. She micht hae waled 
{chose 7 i) a mair welcome messenger, an’ 
sent her a better eeran’. But she made 
little o’ me.” 

“ Ye had naething o’ the kin’, I s’ wad.” 

“Never a threid. There was a twal- 
hunner shift upo’ the bairn, rowt roon 
’im like deid-claes. Gien ’t had been 
but the Lord’s wull ! It gart me wonner 
at the time, for that wasna hoo a bairn 
’at had been caret for sud be cled.” 


“Was there name or mark upo’ ’t?” 
asked Cuttlefish. 

“ Nane : there was but the place whaur 
the reid ingrain had been pykit oot,” an- 
swered Crab. 

“An’ what cam o’ the shift ?” 

“ Ow ! 1 jist made it doon for a bit sark 
to the bairn whan he grew to be rinnin’ 
aboot. ’At ever I sud hae ta’en steik in 
claith for sic a deil’s buckie ! To 7ne ’at 
was a mither till ’im ! The Lord baud 
me ohn gane mad whan I think o’ ’t !” 

“An’ syne for Lizzy — ” began Mrs. 
Catanach, prefacing fresh remark. 

But at her name the mother flew into 
such a rage that, fearful of scandal, see- 
ing it was the Sabbath and they were on 
their way to public worship, her com- 
panion would have exerted all her pow- 
ers of oiliest persuasion to appease her. 
But if there was one thing Mrs. Cata- 
nach did not understand, it was the heart 
of a mother : “ Hoots, Mistress Findlay ! 
Fowk’ll hear ye. Haud yer tongue, I 
beg. She may dee i’ the strae for me. 
I s’ never put han’ to^the savin’ o’ her, 
or her bairn aither,” said the midwife, 
thinking thus to pacify her. 

Then, like the eruption following mere 
volcanic unrest, out brake the sore-heart- 
ed woman’s wrath. And now at length 
the crustacean was too much for the mol- 
lusk. She raved and scolded and abused 
Mrs. Catanach, till at last she was driven 
to that final resource — the airs of an in- 
jured woman. She turned and walked 
back to the upper town, while Mrs. Find- 
lay went on to take what share she might 
in the worship of the congregation. 

Mrs. Mair had that evening gone once 
more to the Baillies’ Barn in her hus- 
band’s absence, for the words of unbe- 
lief he had uttered in the Job-like agony 
of his soul had haunted the heart of his 
spouse until she too felt as if she could 
hardly believe in a God. Few know 
what a poor thing their faith is till the 
trial comes. And in the weakness con- 
sequent on protracted suffering she had 
begun to fancy that the loss of Phemy 
was a punishment upon them for desert- 
ing the conventicle. Also the school- 
master was under an interdict, and that 
looked like a judgment too. She 77iust 


250 


MALCOLM. 


find some prop for the faith that was 
now shaking like a reed in the wind. 
So to the Baillies’ Barn she had once 
more gone. 

The tempest which had convulsed Mrs. 
Findlay’s atmosphere had swept its va- 
pors with it as it passed away ; and when 
she entered the cavern it was with an 
unwonted inclination to be friendly all 
round. As Fate would have it, she un- 
wittingly took her place by Mrs. Mair. 
whom she had not seen since she gave 
Lizzy shelter. When she discovered who 
her neighbor was she started away and 
stared ; but she had had enough of quar- 
reling for the evening, and besides, had 
not had time to bar her door against the 
angel Pity, who suddenly stepped across 
the threshold of her heart with the sight 
of Mrs. Mair’s pale thin cheeks and tear- 
reddened eyes. As suddenly, however, 
an indwelling demon of her own house, 
whose name was Envy, arose from the 
ashes of her hearth to meet the white- 
robed visitant : Phemy, poor little harm- 
less thing ! was safe enough — who would 
harm a hair of her ? — but Lizzy ? And 
this woman had taken in the fugitive 
from honest chastisement ! She would 
yet have sought another seat, but the 
congregation rose to sing, and her neigh- 
bor’s offer of the use in common of her 
psalm-book was enough to quiet for the 
moment the gaseous brain of the turbu- 
lent woman. She accepted the kindness, 
and, the singing over, did not refuse to 
look on the same page with her daugh- 
ter’s friend while the ploughman read, 
with fitting simplicity, the parable of the 
Prodigal Son. It touched something in 
both, but a different something in each. 
Strange to say, neither applied it to her 
own case, but each to her neighbor’s. As 
the reader uttered the words “ was lost 
and is found,” and ceased, each turned 
to the other with a whisper. Mrs. Mair 
persisted in hers, and the other — which 
was odd enough — yielded and listened. 
“Wad the tale baud wi’ lassies as weel ’s 
laddies. Mistress Findlay, div ye think?” 
said Mrs. Mair. 

“Ow, surely,” was the response, “it 
maun du that. There ’s no respec’ o’ 
persons wi’ Hun. There’s no a doobt 


but yer Phemy ’ll come hame to ye safe 
an’ soon’.” 

“ I was thinkin’ aboot Lizzy,” said the 
other, a little astonished ; and then the 
prayer began, and they had to be silent. 

The sermon of the ploughman was 
both dull and sensible — an excellent va- 
riety where few of the sermons were 
either — but it made little impression on 
Mrs. Findlay or Mrs. Mair. 

As they left the cave together in the 
crowd of issuing worshipers Mrs. Mair 
whispered again. “ I wad invete ye ower, 
but ye wad be wantin’ Lizzy hame, an’ 
I can ill spare the comfort o’ her the 
noo,” she said with the cunning of a 
dove. 

“An’ what comes o’ mef' rejoined 
Mrs. Findlay, her claws out in a moment 
where her personal consequence was 
touched. 

“Ye wadna surely tak her frae me a’ 
at ance ?” pleaded Mrs. Mair. “Ye 
micht lat her bide, jist till Phemy comes 
hame ; an’ syne — ” 

But there she broke down, and the 
tempest of sobs that followed quite over- 
came the heart of Mrs. Findlay. She 
was, in truth, a woman like another ; 
only, being of the crustacean order, she 
had not yet swallowed her skeleton, as 
all of us have to do more or less, sooner 
or later, the idea of that scaffolding be- 
ing that it should be out of sight. With 
the best commonplaces at her command 
she sought to comfort her companion ; 
walked with her to the foot of the red 
path ; found her much more to her mind 
than Mrs. Catanach ; seemed inclined 
to go with her all the way, but suddenly 
stopped, bade her good-night, and left 
her. 


CHAPTER LXIII. 

Miss HORN AND LORD LOSSIE. 

Notwithstanding the quarrel, Mrs. 
Catanach did not return without having 
gained something : she had learned that 
Miss Horn had been foiled in what she 
had no doubt was an attempt to obtain 
proof that Malcolm was not the son of 
Mrs. Stewart. The discovery was a 


MALCOLM, 


grateful one, for who could have told 
but there might be something in exist- 
ence to connect him with another origin 
than she and Mrs. Stewart would assign 
him ? 

The next day the marquis returned. 
Almost his first word was the desire that 
Malcolm should be sent to him. But 
nobody knew more than that he was 
missing ; whereupon he sent for Duncan. 
The old man explained his boy’s absence, 
and as soon as he was dismissed took his 
way to the town and called upon Miss 
Horn. In half an hour the good lady 
started on foot for Duff Harbor. It was 
already growing dark, but there was one 
feeling Miss Horn had certainly been 
created without, and that was fear. 

As she approached her destination, 
tramping eagerly along in a half-cloudy, 
half-starlit night, with a damp east wind 
blowing cold from the German Ocean, 
she was startled by the swift rush of 
something dark across the road before 
her. It came out of a small wood on the 
left toward the sea, and bolted through a 
hedge on the right. 

“ Is that you, laird ?” she cried, but 
there came no answer. 

She walked straight to the house of 
her lawyer-friend, and after an hour’s 
rest the same night set out again for Port- 
lossie, which she reached in safety by her 
bed-time. 

Lord Lossie was very accessible. Like 
Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, he was so 
much interested in the varieties of the 
outcome of human character that he 
would not willingly lose a chance of 
seeing “more man.’’ If the individual 
proved a bore, he would get rid of him 
without remorse — if amusing, he would 
contrive to prolong the interview. There 
was a great deal of undeveloped human- 
ity somewhere in his lordship, one of 
whose indications was this spectacular 
interest in his kind. As to their bygone 
history, how they fared out of his sight 
or what might become of them, he nev- 
er gave a thought to anything of the kind 
— never felt the pull of one of the bonds 
of brotherhood, laughed at them the mo- 
ment they were gone, or, if a woman’s 
story had touched him, wiped his eyes 


251 

with an oath, and thought himself too 
good a fellow for this world. 

Since his retirement from the more in- 
dolent life of the metropolis to the quiet- 
er and more active pursuits of the coun- 
try, his character had bettered a little, in- 
asmuch as it was a shade more access- 
ible to spiritual influences : the hard soil 
had in a few places cracked a hair’s 
breadth, and lay thus far open to the 
search of those sun-rays which, when 
they find the human germ — that is, the 
conscience — straightway begin to sting 
it into life. To this betterment the com- 
pany of his daughter had chiefly con- 
tributed ; for, if she was little more de- 
veloped in the right direction than him- 
self, she was far less developed in the 
wrong, and the play of affection between 
them was the divinest influence that could 
as yet be brought to bear upon either ; but 
certain circumstances of late occurrence 
had had a share in it, occasioning a re- 
vival of old memories which had a con- 
siderably sobering effect upon him. 

As he sat at breakfast about eleven 
o’clock on the morning after his return, 
one of his English servants entered with 
the message that a person calling herself 
Miss Horn, and refusing to explain her 
business, desired to see his lordship for 
a few minuteSj^ 

“Who is she ?’’ asked the marquis. 

The man did not know. 

“What is she like ?’’ 

“An odd-looking old lady, my lord, 
and very oddly dressed.’’ 

“Show her into the next room : I shall 
be with her directly.’’ 

Finishing his cup of coffee and pea- 
fowl’s egg with deliberation, while he 
tried his best to recall in what connec- 
tion he could have heard the name be- 
fore, the marquis at length sauntered 
into the morning room in his dressing- 
gown, with the Times of the day before 
yesterday, just arrived, in his hand. 
There stood his visitor waiting for him 
— such as my reader knows her, black 
and gaunt and grim — in a bay-window, 
whose light almost .surrounded her, so 
that there was scarcely a shadow about 
her, and yet to the eyes of the marquis 
she seemed wrapped in shadows. Mys- 


MALCOLM. 


252 

terious as some sybil, whose being held 
secrets the first whisper of which had 
turned her old, but made her immortal, 
she towered before him with her eyes 
fixed upon him, and neither spoke nor 
moved. 

“To what am I indebted — ” began his 
lordship. 

But Miss Horn speedily interrupted 
his courtesy. “Own to nae debt, my 
lord, till ye ken what it’s for,’’ she said, 
without a tone or inflection to indicate a 
pleasantry. 

“Good!’’ returned his lordship, and 
waited with a smile. She promised 
amusement, and he was ready for it, but 
it hardly came. 

“ Ken ye that han’ o’ wreet, my lord ?’’ 
she inquired, sternly advancing a step 
and holding out a scrap of paper at arm’s 
length, as if presenting a pistol. 

The marquis took it. In his counte- 
nance curiosity had mingled with the 
expectation. He glanced at it. A sha- 
dow swept over his face, but vanished 
instantly : the mask of impervious non- 
expression which a man of his breeding 
always knows how to assume was already 
on his visage. 

“Where did you get this?’’ he said 
quietly, with just the slightest catch in 
his voice. 

“ I got it, my lord, whaur there’s mair 
like it.’’ 

“ Show me them.’’ 

“ I hae shawn ye plenty for a swatch 
[pattern), my lord.’’ 

“ You refuse ?’’ said the marquis ; and 
the tone of the question was like the first 
frosty puff that indicates a change of 
weather. 

“Idiv, my lord,’’ she answered im- 
perturbably. 

“If they are not my property, why did 
you bring me this ?’’ 

“Are they your property, my lord?’’ 

“This is my handwriting.’’ 

“Ye alloo that ?’’ 

“Certainly, my good woman. You 
did not expect me to deny it?’’ 

“God forbid, my lord I But will ye 
uphaud yersel’ the lawfu’ heir to the de- 
ceased ? It lies atween yer lordship an’ 
my.sel’ i’ the mean time.’’ 


He sat down, holding the scrap of pa- 
per between his finger and thumb. “I 
will buy them of you,’’ he said coolly 
after a moment’s thought, and as he 
spoke he looked keenly at her. 

The form of reply which first arose in 
Miss Horn’s indignant soul never reach- 
ed her lips. “ It’s no my trade,’’ she an- 
swered with the coldness of suppressed 
wrath. . “I dinna deal in sic waurs.’’ 

“What do you deal in, then?’’ asked 
the marquis. 

“ In trouth an’ fair play, my lord,’’ she 
answered, and was again silent. , 

So was the marquis for some moments, 
but was the first to resume : “ If you 
think the papers to which you refer of 
the least value, allow me to tell you it 
is an entire mistake.’’ 

“ There was ane thoucht them o’ vail- 
ue,’’ replied Miss Horn — and her voice 
trembled a little, but she hemmed away 
her emotion — “for a time at least, my 
lord ; an’ for her sake they’re o’ vailue 
to me, be they what they may to yer 
lordship. But wha can tell ? Scots law 
may put life intill them yet, an’ gie them 
a vailue to somebody forbye me.’’ 

“What I mean, my good woman, is, 
that if you think the possession of those 
papers gives you any hold over me which 
you can turn to your advantage, you are 
mistaken.’’ 

“ Guid forgie ye, my lord ! My advan- 
tage 1 I thoucht yer lordship had been 
mair o’ a gentleman by this time, or I 
wad hae sent a lawyer till ye, in place 
o’ cornin’ mysel’.’’ 

“What do you mean by that?’’ 

“ It’s plain ye cudna hae been muckle 
o’ a gentleman ance, my lord; an’ it 
seems ye’re no muckle mair o’ ane yet, 
for a’ ye maun hae come throu’ i’ the 
mean time.’’ 

“ I trust you have discovered nothing 
in those letters to afford ground for such 
a harsh judgment,’’ said the marquis se- 
riously. 

“ Na, no a word i’ them, but the mair 
oot o’ them. Ye winna threep upo’ me 
’at a man wha lea’s a woman, lat alane 
his wife — or ane ’at he ca’s his wife — to 
a’ the pains o’ a mither an’ a’ the penal- 
ties o’ an oonmerried ane, ohn ever speirt 


MALCOLM. 


253 


hoo she wan throu’ them, preserves the 
richt he was born till o’ bein’ coontit a 
gentleman ? Ony gait, a maiden wu- 
man like mysel’, wha has nae feelin’s, 
will not alloo him the teetle. Guid for- 
bid it !” 

“You are plain-spoken.” 

“I’m plain made, my lord. I ken 
guid frae ill, an’ little forbye, but aye 
fand that eneuch to sair my turn. Aither 
thae letters o’ yer lordship’s are ilk ane 
o’ them a lee, or ye desertit yer wife an’ 
bairn — ” 

“Alas!” interrupted the marquis with 
some emotion, “she deserted me, and 
took the child with her.” 

“Wha ever,daurt sic a lee upo’ my 
Grizel ?” shouted Miss Horn, clenching 
and shaking her bony fist at the world 
in general. “It was but a fortnicht or 
three weeks, as near as I can judge, 
efter the birth o’ your bairn, that Grizel 
Cam’ell — ” 

“ Were you with her then ?” again in- 
terrupted the marquis, in a tone of sor- 
rowful interest. 

“No, my lord, I was not. Gien I had 
been, I wadna be upo’ sic an eeran’ this 
day. For nigh twenty lang years 'at her 
an’ me keepit hoose thegither, till she 
dee’d i’ my airms, never a day was she 
oot o’ my sicht, or ance — ” 

The marquis leaped rather than start- 
ed to his feet, exclaiming, “What in the 
name of God do you mean, woman ?” 

“ I kenna what ye mean, my lord. I 
ken ’at I’m but tellin’ ye the trouth whan 
I tell ye ’at Grizel Cam’ell, up to that 
day — an’ that’s little ower sax month 
sin’ syne — ” 

“Good God !” cried the marquis; “and 
here have I — Woman, are you speak- 
ing the truth ? If — ” he added threat- 
eningly, and paused. 

“ Leein’ ’s what I never cud bide, my 
lord, an’ I’m no likely to tak till ’t at 
my age, wi’ the lang-to-come afore me.” 

The marquis strode several times up 
and down the floor. 

“ I’ll give you a thousand pounds for 
those letters,” he said, suddenly stopping 
in front of Miss Horn. 

“They’re o’ nae sic worth, my lord — I 
hae yer ain word for ’t. But I carena 


the leg o’ a spin-maggie [daddy-long- 
legs). Pairt wi’ them I will not, ’cep’ 
to him ’at proves himsel’ the richtfu’ 
'heir to them.” 

“A husband inherits from his wife.” 

“ Or maybe her son micht claim first . 
I dinna ken. But there ’s lawyers, my 
lord, to redd the doobt.” 

“Her son? You don’t mean — ” 

“ I div mean Malcolm MacPhail, my 
lord.” 

“God in heaven !” 

“His name ’s mair i’ yer mou’ nor i’ 
yer hert. I’m doobtin’, my lord. Ye a’ 
cry oot upo’ Him — the men o’ ye — whan 
ye’re in ony tribble or want to gar wo- 
men believe ye. But I’m thinkin’ He 
peys but little heed to sic prayers.” 

Thus Miss Horn ; but Lord Lossie was 
striding up and down the room, heedless 
of her remarks, his eyes on the ground, 
his arms straight by his sides and his 
hands clenched. “ Can you prove what 
you say?” he asked at length, half stop- 
ping and casting an almost wild look at 
Miss Horn, then resuming his hurried 
walk. His voice sounded hollow, as if 
sent from the heart of a gulf of pain. 

“No, my lord,” answered Miss Horn. 

“ Then what the devil,” roared the 
marquis, “do you mean by coming to 
me with such a cock-and-bull story ?” 

“There’s naither cock-craw nor bill- 
rair intill it, my lord. I come to you wi’ 
’t i’ the houp ye’ll help to redd [clear) it 
up, for I dinna weel ken what we can 
du, wantin’ ye. There’s but ane kens 
a’ the trouth o’ ’t, an’ she’s the awfu’est 
leear oot o’ purgatory — no ’at I believe 
in purgatory, but it’s the langer an’ licht- 
er word to mak’ use o’.” 

“Who is she ?” 

“By name she’s Bawby Cat’nach, an’ 
by natur’ she’s wat I tell ye ; an’ gien I 
had her atween my twa een, it*s what I 
wad say to the face o’ her.” 

“It can’t be MacPhail. Mrs. Stewart 
says he is ^^’;rson, and the woman Cat- 
anach is her chief witness in support of 
the claim.” 

“The deevil has a better to the twa o’ 
them, my lord, as they’ll ken some day. 
His claim ’ill want nae supportin’. Din- 
na ye believe a word Mistress Stewart, or 


254 


MALCOLM. 


Bawby Catanach aither, wad say to ye. 
Gien he be Mistress Stewart’s, wha was 
his father?” 

‘‘You think that he resembles my late 
brother : he has a look of him, I must 
confess.” 

‘‘ He has, my lord. But onybody ’at 
kent the mither o’ ’m, as you an’ me 
did, my lord, wad see anither lik’ness 
as week” 

‘‘I grant nothing.” 

‘‘Ye grant Grizel Cam’ell yer wife, my 
lord, whan ye own to that wreet. Gien 
’t war naething but a written promise 
an’ a bairn to follow, it wad be merriage 
eneuch i’ this cuintry, though it mayna 
be in cuintries no sae ceevileest.” 

‘‘ But all that is nothing as to the child. 
Why do you fix on this young fellow ? 
You say you can’t prove it.” 

‘‘ But ye cud, my lord, gien ye war as 
set upo’ justice as I am. Gien ye win- 
na muv i’ the maitter, we s’ manage to 
hirple {^go halting') throu’, wantin’ ye, 
though, wi’ the Lord’s help.” 

The marquis, who had all this time 
continued his walk up and down the 
floor, stood still, raised his head as if 
about to speak, dropped it again on his 
chest, strode to the other window, turn- 
ed, strode back and said, ‘‘This is a very 
serious matter.” 

‘‘ It’s a’ that, my lord,” replied Miss 
Horn. 

‘‘You must give me a little time to 
turn it over,” said the marquis. 

‘‘ Isna twenty year time eneuch, my 
lord rejoined Miss Horn. 

‘‘ I swear to you that till this moment 
I believed her twenty years in her grave. 
My brother sent me word that she died 
in childbed, and the child with her. I 
was then at Brussels with the duke.” 

Miss Horn made three great strides, 
caught the marquis’s hand in both hers, 
and said, ‘‘ I praise God ye’re an honest 
man, my lord.” 

‘‘ I hope so,” said the marquis, and 
seized the advantage. ‘‘You’ll hold your 
tongue about this ?” he added, half in- 
quiring, half requesting. 

‘‘As lang as I see rizzon, my lord — nae 
langer,” answered Miss Horn, dropping 
his hand. ‘‘Richt maun be dune.” 


‘‘Yes, if you can tell what right is, and 
avoid wrong to others.” 

‘‘ Richt ’s richt, my lord,” persisted 
Miss Horn. ‘‘ I’ll hae nae modifi-quali- 
fications.” 

His lordship once more began to walk 
up and down the room, every now and 
then taking a stolen glance at Miss Horn 
— a glance of uneasy anxious questioning. 
She stood rigid, a very Lot’s wife of im- 
mobility, her eyes on the ground, wait- 
ing what he would say next. 

‘‘ I wish I knew whether I could trust 
her,” he said at length, as if talking 
aloud to himself. 

Miss Horn took no notice. 

‘‘ Why don’t you speak, woman ?” cried 
the marquis with irritation. How he 
hated perplexity ! 

‘‘ Ye speired nae queston, my lord ; an’ 
gien ye had, my word has ower little 
weicht to answer wi’.” 

‘‘ Can I trust you, woman ? I want to 
know,” said his lordship angrily. 

‘‘ No far’er, my lord, nor to du what I 
think’s richt.” 

‘‘ I want to be certain that you will do 
nothing with those letters until you hear 
from me ?” said the marquis, heedless 
of her reply. 

‘‘ I’ll du naething afore the 'morn. 
Far’er nor that I winna pledge mysel’,” 
answered Miss Horn, and with the words 
moved toward the door. 

‘‘Hadn’t you better take this with 
you?” said the marquis, offering the lit- 
tle note, which he had carried all the 
time between his finger and thumb. 

‘‘There’s nae occasion: I hae plenty 
wantin’ that. Only dinna lea’ ’t lyin’ 
aboot.” 

‘‘There’s small danger of that,” said 
the marquis, and rang the bell. 

The moment she was out of the way 
he went up to his own room, and, flinging 
the door to, sat down at the table and 
laid his arms and head upon it. The 
acrid vapor of tears that should have 
been wept long since rose to his eyes : 
he dashed his hand across them, as if 
ashamed that he was not even yet out 
of sight of the kingdom of heaven. 
His own handwriting, of a period when 
all former sins and defilements seemed 


MALCOLM. 


255 


about to be burned clean from his soul 
by the fire of an honest and virtuous 
love, had moved him ; for genuine had 
been his affection for the girl who had 
risked and lost so much for him. It 
was with no evil intent — for her influence 
had rendered him for the time incapable 
of playing her false, but in part from 
reasons of prudence, as he persuaded 
himself, for both their sakes, and in part 
led astray by the zest which minds of a 
certain cast derive from the secresy of 
pleasure — that he had persuaded her to 
the unequal yoking of honesty and se- 
cresy. But suddenly called away and 
sent by the prince on a private mission 
soon after their marriage, and before 
there was any special reason to appre- 
hend consequences that must lead to 
discovery, he had, in the difficulties of 
the case and the hope of a speedy re- 
turn, left her without any arrangement 
for correspondence ; and all he had ever 
heard of her more was from his brother, 
then the marquis — a cynical account of 
the discovery of her condition, followed 
almost immediately by a circumstantial 
one of her death and that of her infant. 
He was deeply stung, and the thought 
of her sufferings in the false position 
where his selfishness had placed her 
haunted him for a time beyond his en- 
durance ; for of all things he hated suffer- 
ing, and of all sufferings remorse is the 
worst. Hence, where a wiser man might 
have repented he rushed into dissipation, 
whose scorching wind swept away not 
only the healing dews of his sorrow, but 
the tender buds of new life that had begun 
to mottle the withering tree of his nature. 
The desire after better things, which had, 
under his wife’s genial influence, begun 
to pass into effort, not only vanished ut- 
terly in the shameless round of evil dis- 
traction, but its memory became a mock- 
ery to the cynical spirit that arose behind 
the vanishing angel of repentance ; and 
he was soon in the condition of the man 
from whom the exorcised demon had 
gone but to find his seven worse com- 
panions. 

Reduced at length to straits, almost to 
want, he had married the mother of 
Florimel, to whom for a time he endeav- 


ored to conduct himself in some meas- 
ure like a gentleman. For this he had 
been rewarded by a decrease in the rate 
of his spiritual submergence, but his be- 
draggled nature could no longer walk 
without treading on its own plumes ; and 
the poor lady who had bartered herself 
for a lofty alliance speedily found her 
mistake a sad one and her life uninter- 
esting, took to repining and tears, alien- 
ated her husband utterly, and died of a 
sorrow almost too selfish to afford even 
a suggestion of purifying efficacy. But 
Florimel had not inherited immediately 
from her mother, so far as disposition 
was concerned : in these latter days she 
had grown very dear to him, and his 
love had once more turned his face a 
little toward the path of righteousness. 
Ah ! when would he move one step to 
set his feet in it ? 

And now, after his whirlwind harvest 
of evil knowledge, bitter disappointment 
and fading passion, in the gathering mists 
of gray hopelessness, and the far worse 
mephitic air of indifference, he had come 
all of a sudden upon the ghastly dis- 
covery that, while overwhelmed with re- 
morse for the vanished past, the present 
and the future had been calling him, but 
had now also — that present and that fu- 
ture — glided from him, and folded their 
wings of glonm in the land of shadows. 
All the fierce time he might have been 
blessedly growing better, instead of heap- 
ing sin upon sin until the weight was 
too heavy for repentance ; for while he 
had been bemoaning a dead wife, that 
wife had been loving a renegade hus- 
band. And the blame of it all he did 
not fail to cast upon that Providence in 
which until now he had professed not to 
believe : such faith as he was yet capa- 
ble of awoke in the form of resentment. 
He judged himself hardly done by, and 
the few admonitory sermons he had hap- 
pened to hear, especially that in the cave 
about the dogs going round the walls of 
the New Jerusalem, returned upon him 
— not as warnings, but as old threats 
now rapidly approaching fulfillment. 

Lovely still peered the dim face of his 
girl-wife upon him through the dusty lat- 
tice of his memory ; and a mighty cor- 


MALCOLM. 


^56 

roboration of Malcolm’s asserted birth 
lay in the look upon his face as he hur- 
ried aghast from the hermit’s cell ; for 
not on his first had the marquis seen that 
look and in those very circumstances. 
And the youth was one to be proud of — 
one among a million. But there were 
other and terrible considerations. 

Incapable as he naturally was of do- 
ing justice to a woman of Miss Horn’s 
-inflexibility in right, he could yet more 
than surmise the absoluteness of that in- 
flexibility — partly because it was hostile 
to himself, and he was in the mood to 
believe in opposition and harshness, and 
deny, not providence, but goodness. 
Convenient half - measures would, he 
more than feared, find no favor with 
her. But she had declared her inabil- 
ity to prove Malcolm his son without 
the testimony of Mrs. Catanach, and the 
latter was even now representing him 
as the son of Mrs. Stewart. That Mrs. 
Catanach at the same time could not be 
ignorant of what had become of the child 
born to him he was all but certain ; for on 
that night when Malcolm and he found 
her in the wizard’s chamber had she not 
proved her strange story — of having been 
carried to that very room blindfolded, 
and after sole attendance on the birth 
of a child — whose mother’s features, 
even in her worst pains, she had not 
once seen — in like manner carried away 
again ? Had she not proved the story 
true by handing him the ring she had 
drawn from the lady’s finger, and sewn, 
for the sake of future identification, into 
the lower edge of one of the bed-cur- 
tains ? — which ring was a diamond he 
had given his wife from his own finger 
when they parted. She probably be- 
lieved the lady to have been Mrs. Stew- 
art, and the late marquis the father of 
the child. Should he see Mrs. Cata- 
nach ? And what then ? 

He found no difficulty in divining the 
reasons which must have induced his 
brother to provide for the secret ac- 
couchement of his wife in the wizard’s 
chamber, and for the abduction of the 
child, if indeed his existence was not ow- 
ing to Mrs. Catanach’s love of intrigue. 
The elder had judged the younger broth- 


er unlikely to live long, and had expect- 
ed his own daughter to succeed himself. 
But now the younger might any day mar- 
ry the governess and legalize the child ; 
and the elder had therefore secured the 
disappearance of the latter, and the be- 
lief of his brother in the death of both. 

Lord Lossie was roused from his rev- 
ery by a light tap at the door, which he 
knew for Malcolm’s and answered with 
admission. 

When he entered his master saw that 
a change had passed upon him, and for a 
moment believed Miss Horn had already 
broken faith with him and found com- 
munication with Malcolm. He was soon 
satisfied of the contrary, however, but 
would have found it hard indeed to un- 
derstand, had it been represented to him, 
that the contentment, almost elation, of 
the youth’s countenance had its source 
in the conviction that he was not the son 
of Mrs. Stewart. 

“So here you are at last?’’ said the 
marquis. 

“Ay, my lord.’’ 

“ Did you find Stewart ?’’ 

“ Ay did we at last, my lord ; but we 
made naething by ’t, for he kent noucht 
aboot the lassie, an’ ’maist lost his wuts 
at the news.’’ 

“No great loss, that,’’ said the mar- 
quis. “Go and send Stoat here.’’ 

“ Is there ony hurry aboot Stoat, my 
lord ?’’ asked Malcolm, hesitating. “ I had 
a word to say to yer lordship mysel’.’’ 

“Make haste, then.’’ 

“I’m some fain to gang back to the 
fishin’, my lord,’’ said Malcolm. “This 
is ower-easy a life for me. The deil wins 
in for the liftin’ o’ the sneck. Forbye, 
my lord, a life wi’oot aither danger or 
wark ’s some wersh-like {^msipid)\ it 
wants saut, my lord. But a’ that’s nai- 
ther here nor there, I ken, sae lang ’s ye 
want me oot o’ the hoose, my lord.’’ 

“ Who told you I wanted you out of 
the house ? By Jove ! I should have 
made shorter work of it. What put that 
in your head ? Why should I ?’’ 

“Gien yer lordship kens nane, sma’ 
occasion hae I to haud a rizzon to yer 
han’. I thoucht— But the thoucht it- 
sel ’s impidence.’’ 


MALCOLM. 


257 


"You young fool! You thought, be- 
cause I came upon you as I did in the 
garret the other night — Bah 1 you 
damned ape ! As if I could not trust — 
Pshaw I” 

For the moment Malcolm forgot how 
angry his master had certainly been, 
although, for Florimel’s sake doubtless, 
he had restrained himself ; and fancied 
that in the faint light of the one candle 
he had seen little to annoy him, and had 
taken the storm and its results, which were 
indeed the sole reason, as a sufficient one 
for their being, alone together. Every- 
thing seemed about to come right again. 
But his master remained silent. 

"I houp my leddy’s weel,” ventured 
Malcolm at length. 

" Quite well. She’s with Lady Bellair 
in Edinburgh." 

Lady Bellair was the bold - faced 
countess. 

" I dinna like her," said Malcolm. 

‘‘Who the devil asked you to like 
her ?" said the marquis. But he laughed 
as he said it. 

" 1 beg yer lordship’s pardon," return- 
ed Malcolm. "I said it or I kent. It 
was nane o’ my business wha my leddy 
was wi’." 

" Certainly not. But I don’t mind con- 
fessing that Lady Bellair is not one I 
should choose to give authority over 
Lady Florimel. You have some regard 
for your young mistress, I know, Mal- 
colm." 

‘‘ I wad dee for her, my lord.” 

"That’s a common assertion," said the 
marquis. 

‘‘ No wi’ fisher-fowk : I kenna hoo it 
may be wi’ your fowk, my lord.” 

‘‘Well, even with us it means some- 
thing. It implies at least that he who 
uses it would risk his life for her whom 
he wishes to believe it. But perhaps it 
may mean more than that in the mouth 
of a fisherman ? Do you fancy there is 
such a thing as devotion — real devotion, 
I mean — self-sacrifice, you know ?" 

‘‘1 daurna doobt it, my lord.” 

"Without fee or hope of reward ?” 

17 


“ There maun be some cawpable o’ ’t, 
my lord, or what for sud the warl’ be ? 
What ither sud baud it ohn been de- 
stroyt as Sodom was for the want o’ the 
ten richteous ? There 'maun be saut 
whaur corruption hasna the thing a’ its 
ain gait." 

"You certainly have pretty high no- 
tions of things, MacPhail. For my part, 

I can easily enough imagine a man risk- 
ing his life ; but devoting it ! That’s an- 
other thing altogether.” 

“There maun be ’at wad du a’ ’at cud 
be dune, my lord.” 

" What, for instance, would you do for 
Lady Florimel, now ? You say you would 
die for her : what does dying mean on a 
fisherman’s tongue ?’’ 

"It means a’ thing, my lord — short o’ 
ill. I wad sterve for her, but I wadna 
steal ; I wad fecht for her, but I wadna 
lee.” 

"Would you be her servant all your 
days ? Come, now I" 

“ Mair nor willin’ly, my lord, gien she 
wad only hae me an’ keep me." 

“ But suppose you came to inherit the 
Kirkbyres property ?’’ 

"My lord," said Malcolm solemnly, 
“ that’s a puir test to put me till : it gangs 
for naething. I wad raither clean my 
leddy’s butes frae mornin’ to nicht nor 
be the son o’ that wuman gien she war 
a born duchess. Try me wi’ something 
worth yer lordship’s mou’.” 

But the marquis seemed to think he 
had gone far enough for the present. 
With gleaming eyes he rose, took his 
withered love-letter from the table, put 
it in his waistcoat-pocket, and saying, 
" Well, find out for me what this is they’re 
about with the schoolmaster,” walked to 
the doori^ 

"I ken a’ aboot that, my lord," an- 
swered Malcolm, "ohn speirt at ony- 
body.” 

Lord Lossie turned from the door, or- 
dered him to bring his riding-coat and 
boots, and, ringing the bell, sent a mes- 
sage to Stoat to saddle the bay mare. 


:pa.e.t x:zz. 


CHAPTER LXIV. 

THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER. 

W HEN Malcolm and Joseph set out 
from Duff Harbor to find the laird, 
they could hardly be said to have gone 
in search of him : all in their power was 
to seek the parts where he was occasion- 
ally seen, in the hope of chancing upon 
him ; and they wandered in vain about 
the woods of Fife House all that week, 
returning disconsolate every evening to 
the little inn on the banks of the Wan 
Water. Sunday came and went without 
yielding a trace of him ; and, almost in 
despair, they resolved, if unsuccessful 
the next day, to get assistance and or- 
ganize a search for him. Monday pass- 
ed like the days that had preceded it, 
and they were returning dejectedly down 
the left bank of the Wan Water in the 
gloaming, and nearing a part where it is 
hemmed in by precipitous rocks and is 
very narrow and deep, crawling slow and 
black under the lofty arch of an ancient 
bridge that spans it at one leap, when 
suddenly they caught sight of a head 
(Peering at them over the parapet. They 
. dared not run for fear of terrifying him 
if it should be the laird, and hurried 
quietly to the spot. But when they reach- 
- ed the end of the bridge its round back 
•was bare from end to end. On the other 
side of the river the trees came close up, 
.and pursuit was hopeless in the gathering 
..darkness. 

“ Laird, laird ! they’ve ta’en awa’ 
JPhemy, an’ we dinna ken whaur to luik 
.for her,” cried the poor father aloud. 

Almost the same instant, and as if he 
■had issued from the ground, the laird 
stood before them. The men started 
.back with astonishment — soon changed 
into pity, for there was light enough to 
-see how miserable the poor fellow look- 
ed. Neither exposure nor privation had 
•.thus wrought upon him : he was simply 
dying of fear. Having greeted Joseph 

358 


with embarrassment, he kept glancing 
doubtfully at Malcolm, as if ready to run 
on his least movement. In few words 
Joseph explained their quest — with trem- 
bling voice and tears that would not be 
denied enforcing the tale. Ere he had 
done the laird’s jaw had fallen and fur- 
ther speech was impossible to him. But 
by gestures sad and plain enough he in- 
dicated that he knew nothing of her, and 
had supposed her safe at home with her 
parents. In vain they tried to persuade 
him to go back with them, promising 
every protection : for sole answer he 
shook his head mournfully. 

There came a sudden gust of wind 
among the branches. Joseph, little used 
to trees and their ways with the wind, 
turned toward the sound, and Malcolm 
unconsciously followed his movement. 
When they turned again the laird had 
vanished, and they took their way home- 
ward in sadness. 

What passed next with the laird can 
be but conjectured. It came to be well 
enough known afterward where he had 
been hiding ; and had it not been dusk 
as they came down the river-bank the 
two men might, looking up to the bridge 
from below, have had it suggested to 
them. For in the half-spandrel wall be- 
tween the first arch and the bank they 
might have spied a small window look- 
ing down on the sullen, silent gloom, 
foam-flecked with past commotion, that 
crept languidly away from beneath. It 
belonged to a little vaulted chamber in 
the bridge, devised by some vanished lord 
as a kind of summer-house — long neg- 
lected, but having in it yet a mouldering 
table, a broken chair or two and a rough 
bench. A little path led steep from the 
end of the parapet down to its hidden 
door. It was now used only by the game- 
keepers for traps and fishing-gear and 
odds and ends of things, and was gen- 
erally supposed to be locked up. The 


MALCOLM. 


259 


laird had, however, found it open, and 
his refuge in it had been connived at by 
one of the men, who, as they heard after- 
ward, had given him the key and assist- 
ed him in carrying out a plan he had de- 
vised for barricading the door. It was 
from this place he had so suddenly risen 
at the call of Blue Peter, and to it he had 
as suddenly withdrawn again — to pass in 
silence and loneliness through his last 
purgatorial pain.* 

Mrs. Stewart was sitting in her draw- 
ing-room alone : she seldom had visitors 
at Kirkbyres — not that she liked being 
alone, or indeed being there at all, for 
she would have lived on the Continent, 
but that her son’s trustees, partly to in- 
dulge their own aversion to her, taking 
upon them a larger discretionary power 
than rightly belonged to them, kept her 
too straitened, which no doubt in the 
recoil had its share in poor Stephen’s 
misery. It was only after scraping for a 
whole year that she could escape to Paris 
or Homburg, where she was at home. 
There her sojourn was determined by her 
good or ill fortune at faro. 

What she meditated over her knitting 
by the firelight — she had put out her 
candles — it would be hard to say, per- 
haps unwholesome to think : there are 
souls to look into which is, to our dim 
eyes, like gazing down from the verge 
of one of the Swedenborgian pits. 

But much of the evil done by human 
beings is as the evil of evil beasts : they 
know not what they do — an excuse 
which, except in regard t^the past, no 
man can make for himself, seeing the 
very making of it must testify its false- 
hood. 

She looked up, gave a cry and started 
to her feet: Stephen stood before her, 
halfway between her and the door. Re- 
vealed in a flicker of flame from the fire, 
he vanished in the following shade, and 
for a moment she stood in doubt of her 
seeing sense. But when the coal flash- 
ed again there was her son, regarding 
her out of great eyes that looked as if 

* Com’ io fui dentro, in un bogliente vetro 
Gittato mi sarei per rinfrescarmi, 

Tant' era ivi lo’ncendio senza metro. 

Del Purgatorio, xxvii. 49. 


they had seen death. A ghastly air 
hung about him, as if he had just come 
back from Hades, but in his silent bear- 
ing there was a sanity, even dignity, 
which strangely impressed her. He came 
forward a pace or two, stopped, and said, 

“ Dinna be frichtit, mem. I’m come. 
Sen’ the lassie hame an’ du wi’ me as 
ye like. I canna baud aff o’ me. But I 
think I’m deein’, an’ ye needna misguide 
me.” 

His voice, although it trembled a little, 
was clear and unimpeded, and, though * 
weak in its modulation, manly. 

Something in the woman’s heart re- 
sponded. Was it motherhood or the 
deeper godhead ? Was it pity for the 
dignity housed in the crumbling clay, or 
repentance for the son of her womb ? 
Or was it that sickness gave hope, and 
she could afford to be kind ? 

‘‘ I don’t know what you mean, Ste- 
phen,” she said, more gently than he 
had ever heard her speak. 

Was it an agony of mind or of body, 
or was it but a flickering of the shadows 
upon his face ? A moment, and he gave 
a half- choked shriek and fell on the 
floor. His mother turned from him with 
disgust and rang the bell. “Send Tom 
here,” she said. 

An elderly, hard-featured man came. 

“Stephen is in one of his fits,” she 
said. 

The man looked about him : he could 
see no one in the room but his mistress. 

“There he is,” she continued, point- 
ing to the floor. “ Take him away. Get 
him up to the loft and lay him in the 
hay.” 

The man lifted his master like an un- 
wieldy log and carried him, convulsed, 
from the room. 

Stephen’s mother sat down again by 
the fire and resumed her knitting. 


CHAPTER LXV. 

THE laird’s vision. 

Malcolm had just seen his master set 
out for his solitary ride when one of the 
maids informed him that a man from 
Kirkbyres wanted him. Hiding his re- 


26 o 


MALCOLAf, 


luctance, he went with her and found 
Tom, who was Mrs. Stewart’s grieve and 
had been about the place all his days. 

“Mr. Stephen’s come hame, sir,’’ he 
said, touching his bonnet, a civility for 
which Malcolm was not grateful. 

“It’s no possible,’’ returned Malcolm. 
“I saw him last nicht.’’ 

“He cam aboot ten o’clock, sir, an’ 
hed a turn o’ the fa’in’ sickness o’ the 
spot. He’s verra ill the noo, an’ the 
mistress sent me ower to speir gien ye 
wad obleege her by gaein’ to see him.’’ 

“ Has he ta’en till ’s bed ?’’ asked 
Malcolm. 

“We pat him intill ’t, sir. He’s ravin’ 
mad, an’ I’m thinkin’ he’s no far frae his 
hin’er en’.’’ 

“I’ll gang wi’ ye direckly,’’ said Mal- 
colm. 

In a few minutes they were riding fast 
along the road to Kirkbyres, neither with 
much to say to the other, for Malcolm 
distrusted every one about the place, and 
Tom was by nature taciturn. 

“What garred them sen’ for me, div 
ye ken ?’’ asked Malcolm at length when 
they had gone about halfway. 

“ He cried oot upo’ ye i’ the nicht,’’ 
answered Tom. 

When they arrived Malcolm was shown 
into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Stew- 
art met him with red eyes. “Will you 
come and see my poor boy ?’’ she said. 

“ I wull du that, mem. Is he verra ill ?’’ 

“Very. I’m afraid he is in a bad 
way.’’ 

She led him to a dark, old-fashioned 
chamber, rich and gloomy. There, sunk 
in the down of a huge bed with carved 
ebony posts, lay the laird, far too ill to 
be incommoded by the luxury to which 
he was unaccustomed. His head kept 
tossing from side to side and his eyes 
seemed searching in vacancy. 

“ Has the doctor been to see ’im, mem ?’’ 
asked Malcolm. 

“Yes, but he says he can’t do anything 
for him.’’ 

“ Wha waits upon ’im, mem ?’’ 

“ One of the maids and myself.’’ 

“ I’ll jist bide wi’ ’im.’’ 

“That will be very kind of you.’’ 

“ I s’ bide wi’ ’im till I see ’im oot o’ 


this, ae w’y or ither,’’ added Malcolm, 
and sat down by the bedside of his poor 
distrustful friend. There Mrs. Stewart 
left him. 

The laird was wandering in the thorny 
thickets and slimy marshes which, haunt- 
ed by the thousand misshapen horrors 
of delirium, beset the gates of life. That 
one so near the light and slowly drifting 
into it should lie tossing in hopeless dark- 
ness ! Is it that the delirium falls, a veil 
of love, to hide other and more real ter- 
rors? 

His eyes would now and then meet 
those of Malcolm as they gazed tender- 
ly upon him,’ but the living thing that 
looked out of the windows was darken- 
ed and saw him not. Occasionally a 
word would fall from him, or a murmur 
of half-articulation float up like the sound 
of a river of souls ; but whether Malcolm 
heard, or only seemed to hear, something 
like this, he could not tell, for he could 
not be certain that he had not himself 
shaped the words by receiving the bab- 
ble into the moulds of the laird’s cus- 
tomary thought and speech : “ I dinna 
ken whaur I cam frae — I kenna whaur 
I’m gaein’ till. — Eh, gien He wad but 
come oot an’ shaw Himsel’ ! — O Lord ! 
tak the deevil aff o’ my puir back. — O 
Father o’ lichts! gar him tak the hump 
wi’ him. I hae no fawvor for’t, though 
it’s been my constant compainion this 
mony a lang.’’ 

But in general he only moaned, and 
after the words thus heard or fashioned 
by Malcolm lay silent and nearly still for 
an hour. 

All the waning afternoon Malcolm sat 
by his side, and neither mother, maid nor 
doctor came near them. 

“ Dark wa’s an’ no a breath !’’ he mur- 
mured or seemed to murmur again. “ Nae 
gerse nor flooers nor bees ! I hae na room 
for my hump, an’ I canna lie upo’ ’t, for 
that wad kill me. Wull I ever ken whaur 
I cam frae ? The wine’s unco guid. Gie 
me a drap mair, gien ye please. Lady 
Horn. — I thought the grave was a better 
place. I hae lain safter afore I dee’d. — 
Phemy! Phemy ! Rin, Phemy, rin ! 
I s’ bide wi’ them this time. Ye rin, 
Phemy !’’ 


MALCOLM. 


As it grew dark the air turned very 
chill, and snow began to fall thick and 
fast. Malcolm laid a few sticks on the 
smouldering peat - fire, but they were 
damp and did not catch. All at once 
the laird gave a shriek, and crying out, 
“Mither! mither!” fell into a fit so vio- 
lent that the heavy bed shook with his 
convulsions. Malcolm held his wrists 
and called aloud. No one came, and, 
bethinking himself that none could help, 
he waited in silence for what would soon 
follow. 

The fit passed quickly, and he lay 
quiet. The sticks had meantime dried, 
and suddenly they caught fire and blazed 
up. The laird turned his face toward 
the flame; a smile came over it; his 
eyes opened wide, and with such an ex- 
pression of seeing gazed beyond Mal- 
colm that he turned his in the same 
'direction. 

“Eh, the bonny man! The bonny 
man !’’ murmured the laird. 

But Malcolm saw nothing, and turn- 
ed again to the laird : his jaw had fall- 
en, and the light was fading out of his 
face like the last of a sunset. He was 
dead. 

Malcolm rang the bell, told the wo- 
man who answered it what had taken 
place, and hurried from the house, glad 
at heart that his friend was at rest. 

He had ridden but a short distance 
when he was overtaken by a boy on a 
fast pony, who pulled up as he neared 
him. 

“Whaurare ye for?” asked Malcolm. 

“I’m gaein’ for Mistress Cat’nach,” 
answered the boy. 

“Gang yer w’ys than, an’ dinna haud 
the deid waitin’,” said Malcolm with a 
shudder. 

The boy cast a look of dismay behind 
him and galloped off. 

The snow still fell and the night was 
dark. Malcolm spent nearly two hours 
on the way, and met the boy returning, 
who told him that Mrs. Catanach was 
not to be found. 

His road lay down the glen, past Dun- 
can’s cottage, at whose door he dismount- 
ed, but he did not find him. Taking the 
bridle on his arm, he walked by his horse 


261 

the rest of the way. It was about nine 
o’clock, and the night very dark. As 
he neared the house, he heard Duncan’s 
voice. “ Malcolm, my son ! Will it pe 
your ownself ?” it said. 

“ It wull that, daddy,” answered Mal- 
colm. 

The piper was sitting on a fallen tree, 
with the snow settling softly upon him. 

“ But it’s ower cauld for ye to be sittin’ 
there i’ the snaw, an’ the mirk tu,” added 
Malcolm. 

“Ta tarkness will not be ketting to ta 
inside of her,” returned the seer. “Ah, 
my poy I where ta light kets in, ta tark- 
ness will pe ketting in too. This now, 
your whole pody will pe full of tarkness, 
as ta Piple will say, and Tuncan’s pody 
tat will pe full of ta light.” Then with 
suddenly changed tone he said, “ Listen, 
Malcolm, my son I She’ll pe ferry un- 
easy till you’ll wass pe come home.” 

“What’s the maitter noo, daddy?” re- 
turned Malcolm. “Onything wrang aboot 
the hoose ?” 

“Something will pe wrong, yes, put 
she’ll not can tell where. No, her pody 
will not pe full of light ! For town here, 
in ta curset Lowlands, ta sight has peen 
almost cone from her, my son. It will 
now pe no more as a co creeping troo’ 
her, and she’ll nefer see plain no more 
till she’ll pe come pack to her own 
mountains.” 

“The puir laird’s gane back to his,” 
said Malcolm. “ I won’er gien he kens 
yet, or gien he gangs speirin’ at ilk ane 
he meets gien he can tell him whaur he 
cam frae. He’s mad nae mair, ony gait.” 

“How? Will he pe not tead? Ta poor 
lairt I Ta poor maad lairt !” 

“Ay, he’s deid: maybe that’s what’ll 
be troublin’ yer sicht, daddy.” 

“ No, my son. Ta maad lairt was not 
ferry maad, and if he was maad he was 
not paad, and it was not to ta plame of 
him : he was coot always, howefer.” 

“ He wass that, daddy.” 

“ But it will pe something ferry paad, 
and it will pe efer troubling her speerit. 
When she’ll pe take ta pipes to pe amus- 
ing herself, and will plow ‘ Till an crodh 
a’ Dhonnachaidh’ ( ‘ Turn the Cows, Dun- 
can’), out will pe come ‘ Cumhadh an fhir 


262 


MALCOLM. 


mhoir’ (' The Lament of the Big Man’). 
Aal is not well, my son.” 

“Weel, dinna distress yersel’, daddy. 
Lat come what wull come. Foreseein’ 
’s no forefen’in’. Ye ken yersel’ at mony 
’s the time the seer has broucht the thing 
on by tryin’ to hand it aff.” 

“ It will be true, my son. Put it would 
aalways haf come.” 

“Nae doubt. Sae ye jist come in wi’ 
me, daddy, an’ sit doon by the ha’ fire, 
an’ I’ll come to ye as sune ’s I’ve been 
to see ’at the maister disna want me. 
But ye’ll better come up vM’ me to my 
room first,” he went on’ ‘‘ for the mais- 
ter disna like to see me in onything but 
the kilt.” 

“And why will he not pe in ta kilts 
aal as now ?” 

“I hae been ridin’, ye ken, daddy, an’ 
the trews fits the saiddle better nor the 
kilts.” 

“ She’ll not pe knowing tat. Old Al- 
lister, your creat — her own crandfather, 
was ta pest horseman ta worlt efer saw, 
and he’ll nefer pe hafing ta trews to his 
own leeks nor ta saddle to his horse’s 
pack. He’ll chust make his men pe 
strap on an old plaid, and he’ll be kive 
a chump, and away they wass, horse 
and man, one peast, aal two of tern poth 
together.” 

Thus chatting, they went to the stable, 
and from the stable to the house, where 
they met no one, and went straight up 
to Malcolm’s room, the old man making 
as little of the long ascent as Malcolm 
himself. 


CHAPTER LXVI. 

THE CRY FROM THE CHAMBER. 

Brooding — if a man of his tempera- 
ment may ever be said to brood — over 
the sad history of his young wife and the 
prospects of his daughter, the marquis 
rode over fields and through gates — he 
never had been one to jump a fence in 
cold blood — till the darkness began to 
fall ; and the bearings of his perplexed 
position came plainly before him. 

First of all, Malcolm acknowledged 
and the date of his mother’s death 


known, what would Florimel be in the 
eyes of the world ? Supposing the world 
deceived by the statement that his mother 
died when he was born, where yet was 
the future he had marked out for her ? 
He had no money to leave her, and she 
must be helplessly dependent on her 
brother. 

Malcolm, on the other hand, might 
make a good match, or, with the advan- 
tages he could secure him in the army, 
still better in the navy, well enough push 
his way in the world. 

Miss Horn could produce no testimony, 
and Mrs. Catanach had asserted him to 
be the son of Mrs. Stewart. He had seen 
enough, however, to make him dread 
certain possible results if Malcolm were 
acknowledged as the laird of Kirkbyres. 
No : there was but one hopeful measure, 
one which he had even already approach- 
ed in a tentative way — an appeal, name- 
ly, to Malcolm himself, in which, while 
acknowledging his probable rights, but 
representing in the strongest manner 
the difficulty of proving them, he would 
set forth in their full dismay the conse- 
quences to Florimel of their public rec- 
ognition, and offer, upon the pledge of 
his word to a certain line of conduct, to 
start him in any path he chose to follow. 

Having thought the thing out pretty 
thoroughly, as he fancied^ and resolved 
at the same time to feel his way toward 
negotiations with Mistress Catanach, he 
turned and rode home. 

After a tolerable dinner he was sitting 
over a bottle of the port which he prized 
beyond anything else his succession had 
brought him, when the door of the dining- 
room opened suddenly and the butlei 
appeared, pale with terror. “ My lord ! 
my lord !” he stammered as he closed 
the door behind him. 

“Well? What the devil’s the matter 
now ? Whose cow’s dead ?” 

“Your lordship didn’t hear it, then?” 
faltered the butler. 

“You’ve been drinking, Bings,” said 
the marquis, lifting his seventh glass of 
port. 

“/didn’t say I heard it, my lord.” 

“ Heard what, in the name of Beelze- 
bub ?” 


MALCOLM. 


263 


“The ghost, my lord.” 

“The what?’’ shouted the marquis. 

“That’s what they call it, my lord. 
It’s all along of having that wizard’s 
chamber in the house, my lord.’’ 

“You’re a set of fools,’’ said the mar- 
quis — “the whole kit of you !’’ 

“ That’s what I say, my lord. I don’t 
know what to do with them, stericking 
and screaming. Mrs. Courthope is try- 
ing her best with them, but it’s my be- 
lief she’s about as bad herself.’’ 

The marquis finished his glass of wine, 
poured out and drank another, then 
walked to the door. When the butler 
opened it a strange sight met his eyes. 
All the servants in the house, men and 
women, Duncan and Malcolm alone 
excepted, had crowded after the butler, 
every one afraid of being left behind ; 
and there gleamed the crowd of ghastly 
faces in the light of the great hall-fire. 
Demon stood in front, his mane bristling 
and his eyes flaming. Such was the si- 
lence that the marquis heard the low 
howl ^f the waking wind, and the snow 
like the patting of soft hands against the 
windows. He stood for a moment, more 
than half enjoying their terror, when 
from somewhere in the building a far- 
off shriek, shrill and piercing, -rang in 
every ear. Some of the men drew in 
their breath with a gasping sob, but most 
of the women screamed outright; and 
that set the marquis cursing. 

Duncan and Malcolm had but just en- 
tered the bed-room of the latter when the 
shriek rent the air close beside, and for 
a moment deafened them. So agonized, 
so shrill, so full of dismal terror was it, 
that Malcolm stood aghast, and Duncan 
started to his feet with responsive out- 
cry. But Malcolm at once recovered 
himself. “Bide here till I come back,’’ 
he whispered, and hurried noiselessly 
out. 

In a few minutes he returned, during 
which all had been still. “Noo, daddy,’’ 
he said, “ I’m gaein’ to drive in the door 
o’ the neist room. There’s some deevil- 
ry at wark there. Stan’ ye i’ the door, 
an’ ghaist or deevil ’at wad win by ye, 
grip it, an’ baud on like Demon the 
dog.’’ 


“She will so, she will so,” muttered 
Duncan in a strange tone. “Ochone! 
that she’ll not pe hafing her turk with 
her ! Ochone ! ochone !” 

Malcolm took the key of the wizard’s 
chamber from his chest and his candle 
from the table, which he set down in the 
passage. In a moment he had unlocked 
the door, put his shoulder to it and burst 
it open. A light was extinguished, and 
a shapeless figure went gliding away 
through the gloom. It was no shadow, 
however, for, dashing itself against a 
door at the other side of the chamber, it 
staggered back with an imprecation of 
fury and fear, pressed two hands to its 
head, and, turning at bay, revealed the 
face of Mrs. Catanach. 

In the door stood the blind piper with 
outstretched anns and hands ready to 
clutch, the fingers curved like claws, his 
knees and haunches bent, leaning for- 
ward like a rampant beast prepared to 
spring. In his face was wrath, hatred, 
vengeance, disgust — an enmity of all 
mingled kinds. 

Malcolm was busied with something 
in the bed, and when she turned Mrs. 
Catanach saw only Duncan’s white face 
of hatred gleaming through the darkness. 
“Ye auld donnert deevil !” she cried, with 
an addition too coarse to be set down, 
and threw herself upon him. 

The old man said never a word, but 
with indrawn breath hissing through his 
clenched teeth clutched her, and down 
they went together in the passage, the 
piper undermost. He had her by the 
throat, it is true, but she had her fingers 
in his eyes, and, kneeling on his chest, 
kept him down with a vigor of hostile 
eflbrt that drew the very picture of mur- 
der. It lasted but a moment, however, 
for the old man, spurred by torture as. 
well as hate, gathered what survived of 
a most sinewy strength into one huge 
heave, threw her back into the room, and 
rose with the blood streaming from his 
eyes, just as the marquis came round the 
near end of the passage, followed by Mrs. 
Courthope, the butler. Stoat and two of 
the footmen. Heartily enjoying a row, 
he stopped instantly, and, signing a halt 
to his followers, stood listening to the 


264 


MALCOLM. 


mud-geyser that now burst from Mrs. 
Catanach’s throat. 

“Ye blin’ abortion o’ Sawtan’s soo!’’ 
she cried, “didna I tak ye to du wi’ ye 
as I likit ? An’ that deil’s tripe ye ca’ 
yer oye [grandson ) — He ! he ! him 
yer gran’son ! He’s naething but ane o’ 
yer hath Cawm’ells !’’ 

“A teanga a’ diabhuil mhoir, tha thu 
ag denamh breug (O tongue of the great 
devil ! thou art making a lie),’’ screamed 
Duncan, speaking for the first time. 

“God lay me deid i’ my sins gien he 
be onything but a bastard Cawm’ell !’’ 
she asseverated with a laugh of demo- 
niacal scorn. “Yer dautit [petted ) Ma’- 
colm’s naething but the dyke-side brat 
o’ the late Grizel Cawm’ell, ’at the fowk 
tuik for a sant ’cause she grat an’ said 
naething. I laid the Cawm’ell pup i’ 
yer boody [scarecrow) airms wi’ my ain 
ban’s, upo’ the tap o’ yer curst scraighin’ 
bagpipes ’at sae aften drave the sleep 
frae my een. Na, ye wad nane o’ me ! 
But I ga’e ye a Cawm’ell bairn to yer 
hert for a’ that, ye auld, hungert, weyver 
[spider)-\eggit, worm-aten idiot !’’ 

A torrent of Gaelic broke from Dun- 
can, into the midst of which rushed an- 
other from Mrs. Catanach, similar, but 
coarse in vowel and harsh in consonant 
sounds. The marquis stepped into the 
room. “What is the meaning of all 
this?’’ he said with dignity. 

The tumult of Celtic altercation ceased. 
The old piper drew himself up to his full 
height and stood silent. Mrs. Catanach, 
red as fire with exertion and wrath, turn- 
ed ashy pale. The marquis cast on her 
a searching and significant look. 

“See here, my lord,’’ said Malcolm. 

Candle in hand, his lordship approach- 
ed the bed. At the same moment Mrs. 
Catanach glided out with her usual downy 
step, gave a wink as of mutual intelli- 
, gence to the group at the door, and van- 
iished. 

On Malcolm’s arm lay the head of a 
young girl. Her thin, worn countenance 
was stained with tears and livid with 
suffocation. She was recovering, but 
her eyes rolled stupid and visionless. 

“It’s Phemy, my lord — Blue Peter’s 
lassie, ’at was tint,’’ said Malcolm. 


“It begins to look serious,’’ said the 
marquis. — “ Mrs. Catanach ! Mrs. Court- 
hope!’’ 

He turned toward the door. Mrs. 
Courthope entered, and a head or two 
peeped in after her. Duncan stood as 
before, drawn up and stately, his visage 
working, but his body motionless as the 
statue of a sentinel. 

“ Where is the Catanach woman gone ?’’ 
cried the marquis. 

“Cone!’’ shouted the piper. “Cone! 
and her huspant will be waiting to pe 
killing her ! Och nan ochan !’’ 

“ Her husband !’’ echoed the marquis. 

“ Ach ! she’ll not can pe helping it, 
my lort — no more till one will pe tead ; 
and tat should pe ta woman, for she’ll 
pe a paad woman — ta worstest ‘woman 
efer was married, my lort.’’ 

“That’s saying a good deal,’’ returned 
the marquis. 

“Not one wort more as enough, my 
lort,’’ said Duncan. “She was only pe 
her next wife, put, ochone ! ochone ! why 
did she’ll pe marry her ? You would 
haf stapt her long aco, my lort, if she’ll 
was your wife and you was knowing ta 
tamned fox and padger she was pe. 
Ochone ! and she tidn’t pe have her turk 
at her bench nor her sgian in her hose.’’ 

He shook his hands like a despairing 
child, then stamped and wept in the 
agony of frustrated rage. 

Mrs. Courthope took Phemy in her 
arms and carried her to her own room, 
where she opened the window and let 
the snowy wind blow full upon her. As 
soon as she came quite to herself, Mal- 
colm set out to bear the good tidings to 
her father and mother. 

Only a few nights before had Phemy 
been taken to the room where they found 
her. She had been carried from place 
to place, and had been some time, she 
believed, in Mrs. Catanach’s own house. 
They had always kept her in the dark, 
and removed her at night blindfolded. 
When asked if she had never cried out 
before, she said she had been too fright- 
ened ; and when questioned as to what 
had made her do so then, she knew noth- 
ing of it: she remembered only that a 
horrible creature appeared by the bed- 


MALCOLM. 


265 


side, after which all was blank. On the 
floor they found a hideous death-mask, 
doubtless the cause of the screams which 
Mrs. Catanach had sought to stifle with 
the pillows and bed-clothes. 

When Malcolm returned he went at 
once to the piper’s cottage, where he 
found him in bed, utterly exhausted 
and as utterly restless. “Weel, daddy,” 
he said, ‘‘I doobt I daurna come near 
ye noo.” 

“Come to her arms, my poor poy,” 
faltered Duncan. “She’ll pe sorry in 
her sore heart for her poy. Nefer you 
pe minding, my son : you couldn’t help 
ta Cam’ell mother, and you’ll pe her own 
poy however. Ochone ! it will pe a plot 
upon you aal your tays, my son, and 
she’ll not can help you, and it’ll pe 
preaking her old heart.” 

“ Gien God thoucht the Cam’ells worth 
makin’, daddy, I dinna see ’at I hae ony 
richt to compleen ’at I cam’ o’ them.” 

“She hopes you’ll pe forgifing ta plind 
old man, however. She couldn’t see, or 
she would haf known at once petter.” 

“ I dinna ken what ye’re efter noo, 
daddy,” said Malcolm. 

“That she’ll do you a creat wrong, 
and she’ll be ferry sorry for it, my son.” 
. “What wrang did ye ever du me, 
daddy ?” 

“That she was let you crow up a 
Cam’ell, my poy. If she tid put know 
ta paad blood was pe in you, she wouldn’t 
pe tone you ta wrong as pring you up.” 

“ That’s a wrang no ill to forgi’e, dad- 
dy. But it’s a pity ye didna lat me lie, 
for maybe syne Mistress Catanach wad 
hae broucht me up hersel’, an’ I micht 
hae come to something.” 

“ Ta duvil mhor {great) would pe in 
your heart and prain and poosom, my 
son.” 

“Weel, ye see what ye hae saved me 
frae.” 

“Yes ; put ta duvil will be to pay, for 
she couldn’t safe you from ta Cam’ell 
plood, my son. Malcolm, my poy,” he 
added after a pause, and with the solem- 
nity of a mighty hate, “ta efil woman her- 
self will pe a Cam’ell — ta woman Catan- 
ach will pe a Cam’ell, and her nainsel’ 
she’ll not know it pefore she’ll be in ta 


ped with ta worstest Cam’ell tat ever God 
made ; and she pecks his pardon, for 
she’ll not pelieve He wass making ta 
Cam’ells.” 

“ Divna ye think God made me, dad- 
dy ?” asked Malcolm. 

The old man thought for a little. “ Tat 
will tepend on who was pe your father, 
my son,” he replied. “ If he too will be 
a Cam’ell — ochone ! ochone ! Put tere 
may pe some coot plood co into you — 
more as enough to say God will pe make 
you, my son. Put don’t pe asking, Mal- 
colm — ton’t you’ll pe asking.” 

“What am I no to ask, daddy ?” 

“Ton’t pe asking who made you, who 
was ta father to you, my poy. She would 
rather not pe knowing, for ta man might 
pe a Cam’ell poth. And if she couldn’t 
pe lofing you no more, my son, she would 
pe tie before her time, and her tays would 
pe long in ta land under ta crass, my 
son.” 

But the remembrance of the sweet face 
whose cold loveliness he had once kissed 
was enough to outweigh with Malcolm 
all the prejudices of Duncan’s instilla- 
tion, and he was proud to take up even 
her shame. To pass from Mrs. Stewart 
to her was to escape from the clutches 
of a vampire demon to the arms of a 
sweet mother-angel. 

Deeply concerned for the newly-dis- 
covered misfortunes of the old man to 
whom he was indebted for this world’s 
life at least, he anxiously sought to soothe 
him ; but he had far more and far worse 
to torment him than Malcolm even yet 
knew, and with burning cheeks and 
bloodshot eyes he lay tossing from side 
to side, now uttering terrible curses in 
Gaelic and now weeping bitterly. Mal- 
colm took his loved pipes, and with the 
gentlest notes he could draw from them 
tried to charm to rest the ruffled waters 
of his spirit ; but his efforts were all in 
vain, and believing at length that he 
would be quieter without him, he went 
to the House and to his own room. 

The door of the adjoining chamber 
stood open, and the long-forbidden room 
lay exposed to any eye. Little did Mal- 
colm think as he gazed around it that it 
was the room in which he had first breath- 


266 


MALCOLM. 


ed the air of the world ; in which his 
mother had wept over her own false po- 
sition and his reported death ; and from 
which he had been carried, by Duncan’s 
wicked wife, down the ruinous stair and 
away to the lip of the sea, to find a 
home in the arms of the man whom he 
had just left on his lonely couch torn be- 
tween the conflicting emotions of a gra- 
cious love for him and the frightful hate 
of her. 


CHAPTER LXVII. 

FEET OF WOOL. 

The next day. Miss Horn, punctual as 
Fate, presented herself at Lossie House, 
and was shown at once into the marquis’s 
study, as it was called. When his lord- 
ship entered she took the lead the mo- 
ment the door was shut. " By this time, 
my lord, ye’ll doobtless hae made up yer 
min’ to du what’s richt?” she said. 

“That’s what I have always wanted to 
do,’’ returned the marquis. 

“ Hm !’’ remarked Miss Horn as plain- 
ly as inarticulately. 

“ In this affair,’’ he supplemented ; add- 
ing, “It’s not always so easy to tell what 
is right.’’ 

“ It’s no aye easy to luik for ’t wi’ baith 
yer een,’’ said Miss Horn. 

“ This woman Catanach — we must get 
her to give credible testimony. What- 
ever the fact may be, we must have strong 
evidence. And there comes the difficulty, 
that she has already made an altogether 
different statement.’’ 

“ It gangs for naething, my lord. It 
was never made afore a justice o’ the 
peace.’’ 

“ I wish you would go to her and see 
how she is inclined.’’ 

“Me gang to Bawbie Catanach!’’ ex- 
claimed Miss Horn. “I wad as sune 
gang an’ kittle Sawtan’s nose wi’ the 
p’int o’ ’s tail. Na, na, my lord. Gien 
onybody gang till her wi’ my wull, it s’ 
be a limb o’ the law. I s’ hae nae cog- 
nostin’ wi’ her.’’ 

“You would have no objection, how- 
ever, to my seeing her, I presume — just 
to let her know that we have an inkling 
of the truth T' said the marquis. 


Now, all this was the merest talk, for 
of course Miss Horn could not long re- 
main in ignorance of the declaration her 
fury had, the night previous, forced from 
Mrs. Catanach ; but he must, he thought, 
put her off and keep her quiet, if pos- 
sible, until he had come to an under- 
standing with Malcolm, after which he 
would no doubt have his trouble with 
her. 

“Ye can du as yer lordship likes,’’ an- 
swered Miss Horn, “but I wadna hae ’t 
said o’ me ’at I had ony dealin’s wi’ her. 
Wha kens but she micht say ye tried to 
bribe her? There’s naething she wad 
bogle at gien she thoucht it worth her 
while. No" ’at I ’m feart at her. Lat 
her lee I I’m no sae blate but — Only 
dinna lippen till a word she says, my 
lord.’’ 

The marquis hesitated. “ I wonder 
whether the real source of my perplexity 
occurs to you. Miss Horn,’’ he said at 
length. “You know I have a daughter ?’’ 

“Weel eneuch that, my lord.’’ 

“By my second marriage.’’ 

“Nae merridge ava’, my lord.’’ 

“True, if I confess to the first.’’ 

“A’ the same whether or no, my lord.’’ 

“Then you see,’’ the marquis went on, 
refusing offence, “what the admission of 
your story would make of my daughter ?’’ 

“That’s plain eneuch, my lord.’’ 

“ Now, if I have read Malcolm right he 
has too much regard for his — mistress — 
to put her in such a false position.’’ 

“That is, my lord, ye wad hae yer 
lawfu’ son beir the lawless name.’’ 

“ No, no : it need never come out what 
he is. I will provide for him — as a gen- 
tleman, of course.’’ 

“ It canna be, my lord. Ye can du 
naething for him, wi’ that face o’ his, 
but oot comes the trouth as to the fath- 
er o’ ’im ; an’ it wadna be lang afore the 
tale was ekit oot wi’ the name o’ his 
mither — Mistress Catanach wad see to 
that, gien ’twas only to spite me — an’ I 
wunna hae my Grizel ca’d what she is 
not for ony lord’s dauchter i’ the three 
kynriks.’’ 

“What does it matter, now she’s dead 
and gone ?’’ said the marquis, false to the 
dead in his love for the living. 


MALCOLM. 267 


“ Deid an’ gane, my lord ? What ca’ 
ye deid an’ gane ? Maybe the great anes 
o’ the yerth get sic a forlethie {surfeit') 
o’ grand’ur ’at they’re for nae mair, an’ 
wad perish like the brute beast. For 
onything I ken, they may hae their wuss, 
but for mysel’, I wad warstle to baud my 
sowl waukin’ {awake) i’ the verra article 
o’ deith, for the bare chance o’ seein’ my 
bonny Grizel again. It’s a mercy I hae 
nae feelin’s,” she added, arresting her 
handkerchief on its way to her eyes, and 
refusing to acknowledge the single tear 
that ran down her cheek. 

Plainly she was not like any of the 
women whose characters the marquis 
had accepted as typical of womankind. 

“ Then you won’t leave the matter to her 
husband and son ?” he said reproachfully. 

“ I tellt ye, my lord, I wad du naething 
but what I saw to be richt. Lat this af- 
fair oot o’ my ban’s I daurna. That laad 
ye micht work to onything ’at made agane 
himsel’. He’s jist like his puir mither 
there.” 

“If Miss Campbell was his mother,” 
said the marquis. 

” Miss Cam’ell !” cried Miss Horn. 
“ I’ll thank yer lordship to ca’ her by her 
ain, an’ that’s Lady Lossie.” 

What of the something ruinous heart 
of the marquis was habitable was occu- 
pied by his daughter, and had no accom- 
modation at present either for his dead 
wife or his living son. Once more he 
sat thinking in silence for a while. “ I’ll 
make Malcolm a post-captain in the 
navy and give you a thousand pounds,” 
he said at length, hardly knowing that 
he spoke. 

Miss Horn rose to her full height and 
stood like an angel of rebuke before 
him. Not a word did she speak, only 
looked at him for a moment and turned 
to leave the room. The marquis saw his 
danger, and striding to the door stood 
with his back against it. 

“Think ye to scare me, my lord?” she 
asked with a scornful laugh. “Gang an’ 
scare the stane lion-beast at yer ha’-door. 
Hand oot o’ the gait an’ lat me gang.” 

“Not until I know what you are going 
to do,” said the marquis very seriously. 

“ I hae naething mair to transac’ wi’ 


yer lordship. You an’ me ’s strangers, 
my lord.” 

“ Tut ! tut ! I was but trying you.” 

“An’ gien I had ta’en the disgrace ye 
offert me, ye wad hae drawn back ?” 

“No, certainly.” 

“Ye wasna tryin’ me, then: ye was 
duin’ yer best to corrup’ me.” 

“ I’m no splitter of hairs.” 

“ My lord, it’s nane but the corrup’ible 
wad seek to corrup’.” 

The marquis gnawed a nail or two in 
silence. Miss Horn dragged an easy- 
chair within a couple of yards of him. 

“We’ll see wha tires o’ this ghem first, 
my lord,” she said as she sank into its 
hospitable embrace. 

The marquis turned to lock the door, 
but there was no key in it. Neither was 
there any chair within reach, and he was 
not fond of standing. Clearly, his enemy 
had the advantage. 

“ Hae ye h’ard o’ puir Sandy Graham 
— hoo they’re misguidin’ him, my lord ?” 
she asked with composure. 

The marquis was first astounded, and 
then tickled by her assurance. “No,” 
he answered. 

“ They hae turnt him oot o’ hoose an’ 
ha’ — schuil, at least, an’ hame,” she re- 
joined. “ I may say they hae turnt him 
oot o’ Scotian’, for what presbytery wad 
hae him efter he had been fun’ guilty o’ 
no thinkin’ like ither fowk ? Ye maun 
Stan’ his guid freen’, my lord.” 

“He shall be Malcolm’s tutor,” an- 
swered the marquis, not to be outdone in 
coolness, “and go with him to Edinburgh 
— or Oxford, if he prefers it.” 

“Never yerl o’ Colonsay had a better,” 
said Miss Horn. 

“Softly, softly, ma’am,” returned the 
marquis. "I did not say he should go 
in that style.” 

“ He s’ gang as my lord o’ Colonsay or 
he s’ no gang at expense, my lord,” 
said his antagonist. 

“Really, ma’am, one would think you 
were my grandmother, to hear you order 
my affairs for me.” 

“ I wuss I war, my lord : I sud gar ye 
hear risson upo’ baith sides o’ yer heid, 
I s’ warran’.” 

The marquis laughed. “Well, I can’t 


268 


MALCOLM. 


stand here all day,” he said, impatiently 
swinging one leg. 

‘‘I’m weel awaur o’ that, my lord,” an- 
swered Miss Horn, rearranging her scanty 
skirt. 

‘‘ How long are you going to keep me, 
then ?” 

‘‘ I wadna hae ye bide a meenute langer 
nor’s agreeable to yersel’. But /’m in 
nae hurry sae lang’s ye’re afore me. 
Ye’re nae ill to luik at, though ye maun 
hae been bonnier the day ye wan the 
hert o’ my Grizel.” 

The marquis uttered an oath and left 
the door. Miss Horn sprang to it, but 
there was the marquis again. ‘‘Miss 
Horn,” he said, ‘‘ I beg you will give me 
another day to think of this.” 

‘‘Whaur’s the use ? A’ the thinkin’ i’ 
the warl’ canna alter a single fac’. Ye 
maun do richt by my laddie o’ yer ain- 
sel’, or I maun gar ye.” 

‘‘ You would find a lawsuit heavy. Miss 
Horn.” 

‘‘ An’ ye wad fin’ the scandal o’ ’t ill 
to bide, my lord. It wad come sair upo’ 
Miss — I kenna what name she has a 
richt till, my lord.” 

The marquis uttered a frightful impre- 
cation, left the door, and, sitting down, 
hid his face in his hands. 

Miss Horn rose, but instead of securing 
her retreat, approached him gently and 
stood by his side. ‘‘My lord,” she said, 
‘‘ I canna thole to see a man in tribble. 
Women ’s born till ’t, an’ they tak it an’ 
are thankfu’ ; but a man never gies in 
till ’t, an’ sae it comes harder upo’ him 
nor upo’ them. Hear me, my lord : gien 
there be a man upo’ this earth wha wad 
shield a woman, that man ’s Ma’colm 
Colonsay.” 

‘‘ If only she weren’t his sister !” mur- 
mured the marquis. 

‘‘An’ jist bethink ye, my lord: wad it 
be onything less nor an imposition to lat 
a man merry her ohn tellt him what she 
was ?” 

‘‘You insolent old woman !” cried the 
marquis, losing his temper, discretion and 
manners all together. ‘‘ Go and do your 
worst, and be damned to you!” 

So saying, he left the room, and Miss 
Horn found her way out of the house in 


a temper quite as fierce as his — in cha- 
racter, however, entirely different, inas- 
much as it was righteous. 

At that very moment Malcolm was in 
search of his master, and seeing the back 
of him disappear in the library, to which 
he had gone in a half-blind rage, he fol- 
lowed him. ‘‘ My lord !” he said. 

‘‘What do you want?” returned his 
master in a rage. For some time he had 
been hauling on the curb-rein, which had 
fretted his temper the more, and when he 
let go the devil ran away with him. 

‘‘ I thoucht yer lordship wad like to see 
an auld stair I cam upo’ the ither day, ’at 
gangs frae the wizard’s chaumer — ” 

‘‘Go to hell with your damned tomfool- 
ery !” said the marquis. ‘‘ If ever you 
mention that cursed hole again I’ll kick 
you out of the house.” 

Malcolm’s eyes flashed and a fierce 
answer rose to his lips, but he had seen 
that his master was in trouble, and sym- 
pathy supplanted rage. He turned and 
left the room in silence. 

Lord Lossie paced up and down the 
library for a whole hour — a long time 
for him to be in one mood. The mood 
changed color pretty frequently during 
the hour, however, and by degrees his 
wrath assuaged. But at the end of it he 
knew no more what he was going to do 
than when he left Miss Horn in the study. 
Then came the gnawing of his usual 
ennui and restlessness : he must find 
something to do. 

The thing he always thought of first 
was a ride, but the only animal of horse- 
kind about the place which he liked was 
the bay mare, and her he had lamed. 
He would go and see what the rascal had 
come bothering about — alone, though, 
for he could not endure the sight of the 
fisher-fellow, damn him 1 

In a few minutes he stood in the wiz- 
ard’s chamber, and glanced around it 
with a feeling of discomfort rather than 
sorrow — of annoyance at the trouble of 
which it had been for him both fountain 
and storehouse, rather than regret for 
the agony and contempt which his self- 
ishness had brought upon the woman he 
loved : then spying the door in the far- 
thest corner, he made for it, and in a 


MALCOLM. 


269 


moment more, his curiosity now thor- 
oughly roused, was slowly gyrating down 
the steps of the old screw-stair. 

But Malcolm had gone to his own 
room, and, hearing some one in the 
next, half suspected who it was, and 
went in. Seeing the closet-door open, 
he hurried to the stair, and shouted, 
“ My lord ! my lord ! or whaever ye are ! 
tak care hoo ye gang or ye’ll get a ter- 
rible fa’.” 

Down a single yard the stair was quite 
dark, and he dared not follow fast for 
fear of himself falling and occasioning 
the accident he feared. As he descend- 
ed he kept repeating his warnings, but 
either his master did not hear or heeded 
too little, for presently Malcolm heard 
a rush, a dull fall and a groan. Hurry- 
ing as fast as he dared with the risk of 
falling upon him, he found the marquis 
lying amongst the stones in the ground 
entrance, apparently unable to move, 
and white with pain. Presently, how- 
ever, he got up, swore a good deal and 
limped swearing into the house. 

The doctor, who was sent for instant- 
ly, pronounced the knee-cap injured, 
and applied leeches. Inflammation set 
in, and another doctor and surgeon were 
sent for from Aberdeen. They came, 
applied poultices, and again leeches, and 
enjoined the strictest repose. The pain 
was severe, but to one of the marquis’s 
temperament the enforced quiet was 
worse. 


CHAPTER LXVIII. 

HANDS OF IRON. 

The marquis was loved by his do- 
mestics, and his accident, with its con- 
sequences, although none more serious 
were anticipated, cast a gloom over Los- 
sie House. Far apart as was his cham- 
ber from all the centres of domestic life, 
the pulses of his sulfering beat as it were 
through the house, and the servants 
moved with hushed voice and gentle 
footfall. 

Outside, the course of events waited 
upon his recovery, for Miss Horn was 
too generous not to delay proceedings 


while her adversary was ill. Besides, 
what she most of all desired was the 
marquis’s free acknowledgment of his 
son ; and after such a time of suffering 
and constrained reflection as he was now 
passing through he could hardly fail, she 
thought, to be more inclined to what was 
just and fair. 

Malcolm had of course hastened to 
the schoolmaster with the joy of his de- 
liverance from Mrs. Stewart, but Mr. 
Graham had not acquainted him with 
the discovery Miss Horn had made, or 
her belief concerning his large interest 
therein, to which Malcolm’s report of 
the wrath-born declaration of Mrs. Cat- 
anach had now supplied the only testi- 
mony wanting, for the right of disclosure 
was Miss Horn’s. To her he had car- 
ried Malcolm’s narrative of late events, 
tenfold strengthening her position ; but 
she was anxious in her turn that the rev- 
elation concerning his birth should come 
to him from his father. Hence, Malcolm 
continued in ignorance of the strange 
dawn that had begun to break on the 
darkness of his origin. 

Miss Horn had told Mr. Graham what 
the marquis had said about the tutorship, 
but the schoolmaster only shook his head 
with a smile, and went on with his prep- 
arations for departure. 

The hours went by, the days length- 
ened into weeks, and the marquis’s con- 
dition did not improve. He had never 
known sickness and pain before, and 
like most of the children of this world 
counted them the greatest of evils ; nor 
was there any sign of their having as 
yet begun to open his eyes to what those 
who have seen them call truths — those 
who have never even boded their pres- 
ence count absurdities. 

More and more, however, he desired 
the attendance of Malcolm, who was 
consequently a great deal about him, 
serving with a love to account for which 
those who knew his nature would not 
have found it necessary to fall back on 
the instinct of the relation between them. 
The marquis had soon satisfied himself 
that that relation was as yet unknown to 
him, and was all the better pleased with 
his devotion and tenderness. 


270 


MALCOLM. 


The inflammation continued, increased, 
spread, and at length the doctors deter- 
mined to amputate. But the marquis 
was absolutely horrified at the idea — 
shrank from it with invincible repug- 
nance. The moment the first dawn of 
comprehension vaguely illuminated their 
periphrastic approaches he blazed out 
in a fury, cursed them frightfully, called 
them all the contemptuous names in his 
rather limited vocabulary, and swore he 
would see them — uncomfortable first. 

“We fear mortification, my lord,’’ said 
the physician calmly. 

“So do I. Keep it off,’’ returned the 
marquis. 

“We fear we cannot, my lord.’’ It 
had, in fact, already commenced. 

“ Let it mortify, then, and be damned,’’ 
said his lordship. 

“ I trust, my lord, you will reconsider 
it,’’ said the surgeon. “We should not 
have dreamed of suggesting a measure 
of such severity had we not had reason 
to dread that the further prosecution of 
gentler means would but lessen your 
lordship’s chance of recovery.’’ 

“You mean, then, that my life is in 
danger ?’’ 

“We fear,’’ said the physician, “that 
the amputation proposed is the only thing 
that can save it.’’ 

“What a brace of blasted bunglers 
you are !’’ cried the marquis, and, turn- 
ing away his face, lay silent. 

The two men looked at each other and 
said nothing. 

Malcolm was by, and a pang shot 
to his heart at the verdict. The men 
retired to consult. Malcolm approach- 
ed the bed. “My lord!’’ he said gently. 

No reply came. 

“ Dinna lea ’s oor lanes, my lord — no 
yet,’’ Malcolm persisted. “What’s to 
come o’ my leddy ?’’ 

The marquis gave a gasp. Still he 
made no reply. 

“She has naebody, ye ken, my lord, 
’at ye wad like to lippen her wi’.’’ 

“You must take care of her when I am 
gone, Malcolm,’’ murmured the marquis; 
and his voice was now gentle with sad- 
ness and broken with misery. 

“Me, my lord!’’ returned Malcolm. 


“Wha wad min’ me.^ An’ what cud I 
du wi’ her ? I cudna even haud her ohn 
wat her feet. Her leddy’s maid cud du 
mair wi’ her, though I wad lay doon my 
life for her, as I tauld ye, my lord ; an’ 
she kens ’t weel eneuch.’’ 

Silence followed. Both men were 
thinking. 

“Gie me a richt, my lord, an’ I’ll du 
my best,’’ said Malcolm, at length break- 
ing the silence. 

“What do you mean.?’’ growled the 
marquis, whose mood had altered. 

“Gie me a legal richt, my lord, an’ 
see gien I dinna.’’ 

“See what ?’’ 

“ See gien I dinna luik weel efter my 
leddy.’’ 

“ How am I to see ? I shall be dead 
and damned.’’ 

“Please God, my lord, ye’ll be alive 
an’ weel — in a better place, if no here to 
luik efter my leddy yersel’.’’ 

“Oh, I dare say,’’ muttered the mar- 
quis. 

“ But ye’ll hearken to the doctors, my 
lord,’’ Malcolm went on, “an’ no dee 
wantin’ time to consider o’ ’t.’’ 

“Yes, yes : to-morrow I’ll have anoth- 
er talk with them. We’ll see about it. 
There’s time enough 'yet. They’re all 
coxcombs, every one of them. They 
never give a patient the least credit for 
common sense.’’ 

“ I dinna ken, my lord,’’ said Malcolm 
doubtfully. 

After a few minutes’ silence, during 
which Malcolm thought he’ had fallen 
asleep, the marquis resumed abruptly. 
“What do you mean by giving you a 
legal right ?’’ he said. 

“ There’s some w’y o’ makin’ ae body 
guairdian till anither, sae ’at the law ’ll 
uphaud him — isna there, my lord ?’’ 

“Yes, surely. Well! Rather odd — 
wouldn’t it be? — a young fisher -lad 
guardian to a marchioness ! Eh ? They 
say there’s nothing new under the sun, 
but that sounds rather like it, I think.’’ 

Malcolm was overjoyed to hear him 
speak with something like his old man- 
ner. He felt he could stand any amount 
of chaff from him now, and so the prop- 
osition he had made in seriousness he 


MALCOLM. 


271 


went on to defend in the hope of giving 1 
amusement, yet with a secret wild delight 
in the dream of such full devotion to the 
service of Lady Florimel. 

" It wad soon’ queer eneuch, my lord, 
nae doobt, but fowk maunna min’ the 
soon’ o’ a thing gien ’t be a’ straucht an’ 
fair, an’ strong eneuch to stan’. They 
cudna lauch me oot o’ my richts, be they 
’at they likit — Lady Bellair or ony o’ them 
— na, nor jaw me oot o’ them aither.” 

‘‘They might do a good deal to ren- 
der those rights of little use,” said the 
marquis. 

‘‘ That wad come till a trial o’ brains, 
my lord,” returned Malcolm: ‘‘an’ ye 
dinna think I wadna hae the wit to speir 
advice ; an’, what’s mair, to ken whan 
it was guid, an’ tak it. There’s lawyers, 
my lord.” 

“And their expenses ?” 

‘‘Ye cud lea’ sae muckle to be waured 
(spent) upo’ the cairryin’ oot o’ yer lord- 
ship’s wull.” 

‘‘Who would see that you applied it 
properly ?” 

‘‘My ain conscience, my lord, or Mr. 
Graham gien ye likit.” 

‘‘And how would you live yourself?” 

‘‘Ow! lea’ ye that to me, my lord. 
Only dinna imagine I wad be behauden 
to yer lordship. I houp I hae mair pride 
nor that. Ilka poun’-not’, shillin’ an’ 
bawbee sud be laid oot for Ler, an’ what 
was left hainet (saved) for her.” 

‘‘ By Jove ! it’s a daring proposal !” 
said the marquis ; and, which seemed 
strange to Malcolm, not a single thread 
of ridicule ran through the tone in which 
he made the remark. 

The next day came, but brought nei- 
ther strength of body nor of mind with 
it. Again his professional attendants be- 
sought him, and he heard them more 
quietly, but rejected their proposition as 
positively as before. In a day or two he 
ceased to oppose it, but would not hear 
of preparation. Hour glided into hour, 
and days had gathered to a week, when 
they assailed him with a solemn and 
last appeal. 

‘‘Nonsense!” answered the marquis. 

‘‘ My leg is getting better. I feel no pain 
— in fact, nothing but a little faintness. 


I Your damned medicines, I haven’t a 
doubt.” 

‘‘You are in the greatest danger, my 
lord. It is all but too late even now.” 

‘‘ To-morrow, then, if it must be. To- 
day I could not endure to have my hair 
cut, positively ; and as to having my leg 
off — pooh ! the thing’s preposterous.” 

He turned white and shuddered, for 
all the nonchalance of his speech. 

When to-morrow came there was not 
a surgeon in the land who would have 
taken his leg off. He looked in their 
faces, and seemed for the first time con- 
vinced of the necessity of the measure. 

‘‘You may do as you please,” he said: 
‘‘ I am ready.” 

‘‘Not to-day, my lord,” replied the doc- 
tor — ‘‘your lordship is not equal to it to- 
day.” 

‘‘ I understand,” said the marquis, and 
paled frightfully and turned his head 
aside. 

When Mrs. Courthope suggested that 
Lady Florimel should be sent for, he flew 
into a frightful rage, and spoke as it is 
to be hoped he had never spoken to a 
woman before. She took it with perfect 
gentleness, but could not repress a tear. 
The marquis saw it, and his heart was 
touched. ‘‘You mustn’t mind a dying 
man’s temper,” he said. 

‘‘It’s not for myself, my lord,” she an- 
swered. 

‘‘I know: you think I’m not fit to die; 
and, damn it 1 you are right. Never one 
was less fit for heaven or less willing to 
go to hell.” 

‘‘Wouldn’t you like to see a clergyman, 
my lord?” she suggested, sobbing. 

He was on the point of breaking out 
into a still worse passion, but controlled 
himself. ‘‘A clergyman 1” he cried: ‘‘I 
would as soon see the undertaker. What 
could he do but tell me I was going to be 
damned — a fact I know better than he 
can ? That is, if it’s not all an invention 
of the cloth, as, in my soul, I believe it is. 
I’ve said so anytime these forty years.” 

‘‘ Oh, my lord I my lord ! do not fling 
away your last hope.” 

‘‘You imagine me to have a chance, 
then ? Good soul I you don’t know any 
better.” 


272 


MALCOLM. 


“The Lord is merciful.” 

The marquis laughed — that is, he tried, 
failed, and grinned. 

“Mr. Cairns is in the dining-room, my 
lord.” 

“ Bah ! A low pettifogger, with the soul 
of a bullock. Don’t let me hear the fel- 
low’s name. I’ve been bad enough, God 
knows, but I haven’t sunk to the level of 
his help yet. If he’s God Almighty’s fac- 
tor, and the saw holds, ‘ Like master, like 
man,’ well, I would rather have nothing 
to do with either.” 

“That is, if you had the choice, my 
lord,” said Mrs. Courthope, her temper 
yielding somewhat, though in truth his 
speech was not half so irreverent as it 
seemed to her. 

“Tell him to go to hell. No, don’t: 
set him down to a bottle of port and a 
great sponge-cake, and you needn’t tell 
him to go to heaven, for he’ll be there 
already. Why, Mrs. Courthope, the fel- 
low isn’t a gentleman. And yet all he 
cares for the cloth is that he thinks it 
makes a gentleman of him — as if any- 
thing in heaven, earth or hell could work 
that miracle !” 

In the middle of the night, as Malcolm 
sat by his bed, thinking him asleep, the 
marquis spoke suddenly. “You must go 
to Aberdeen to-morrow, Malcolm,” he 
said. 

“Verra weel, my lord.” 

“And bring Mr. Glennie, the lawyer, 
back with you.” 

“Yes, my lord.” 

“Go to bed, then.” 

“ I wad raither bide, my lord. I cudna 
sleep a wink for wantin’ to be back aside 
ye.” 

The marquis yielded, and Malcolm sat 
by him all the night through. He toss- 
ed about, would doze off and murmur 
strangely, then wake up and ask for 
brandy and water, yet be content with 
the lemonade Malcolm gave him. 

Next day he quarreled with every word 
that Mrs. Courthope uttered, kept forget- 
ting he had sent Malcolm away, and was 
continually wanting him. His fits of 
pain were more severe, alternated with 
drowsiness, which deepened at times to 
stupor. 


It was late before Malcolm returned. 
He went instantly to his bedside. 

“ Is Mr. Glennie with you ?” asked his 
master feebly. 

“Yes, my lord.” 

“Tell him to come here at once.” 

When Malcolm returned with the law- 
yer the marquis directed him to place a 
table and chair by the bedside, light four 
candles, provide everything necessary for 
writing and go to bed. 


CHAPTER LXIX. 

THK MARQUIS AND THE SCHOOLMASTER. 

Before Malcolm was awake his lord- 
ship had sent for him. When he re-en- 
tered the sick chamber Mr. Glennie had 
vanished, the table had been removed, 
and, instead of the radiance of the wax- 
lights, the cold gleam of a vapor-dim- 
med sun, with its sickly blue-white reflex 
from the widespread snow, filled the room. 
The marquis looked ghastly, but was sip- 
ping chocolate with a spoon. 

“What w’y are ye the day, my lord ?” 
asked Malcolm. 

“Nearly well,” he answered; “but those 
cursed carrion-crows are set upon killing 
me — damn their souls !” 

“We’ll hae Leddy Florimel sweirin’ aw- 
fu’ gien ye gang on that gait, my lord,” 
said Malcolm. 

The marquis laughed feebly. 

“An’ what’s mair,” Malcolm continued, 
“I doobt they’re some partic’lar aboot 
the turn o’ their phrases up yonner, my 
lord.” 

The marquis looked at him keenly. 
“You don’t anticipate that inconvenience 
for me ?” he said. “ I’m pretty sure to 
have my billet where they’re not so pre- 
cise.” 

“ Dinna brak my hert, my lord,” cried 
Malcolm, the tears rushing to his eyes. 

“ I should be sorry to hurt you, Mal- 
calm,” rejoined the marquis gently, al- 
most tenderly. “I won’t go there if I 
can help it — I shouldn’t like to break 
any more hearts — but how the devil am 
I to keep out of it ? Besides, there are 
people up there I don’t want to meet : I 
have no fancy for being made ashamed 


MALCOLAL 


273 


of myself. The fact is, I’m not fit for 
such company, and I don’t believe there 
is any such place. But if there be, I 
trust in God there isn’t any other, or it 
will go badly with your poor master, 
Malcolm. It doesn’t look like true — 
now docs it? Only such a multitude 
of things I thought I had done with for 
ever keep coming up and grinning at 
me. It nearly drives me mad, Malcolm ; 
and I would fain die like a gentleman, 
with a cool bow and a sharp face-about.” 

“ Wadna ye hae a word wi’ somebody 
’at kens, my lord ?” said Malcolm, scarce- 
ly able to reply. 

“No,” answered the marquis fiercely. 
“That Cairns is a fool.” 

“He’s a’ that, an’ mair, my lord. I 
didna mean him." 

“They’re all fools together.” 

“ Ow, na, my lord. There’s a heap o’ 
them no muckle better, it may be ; but 
there’s guid men an’ true amang them, 
or the Kirk wad hae been wi’ Sodom 
and Gomorrah by this time. But it’s no 
a minister I wad hae yer lordship confar 
wi’.” 

“ Who, then ? Mrs. Courthope, eh ?” 

“Ow na, my lord — no Mistress Court- 
houp. She’s a guid body, but she wadna 
believe her ain een gien onybody ca’d a 
minister said contrar’ to them.” 

“Who the devil do you mean, then?” 

“Nae deevil, but an honest man ’at ’s 
been his warst enemy sae lang ’s I hae 
kent him — Maister Graham, the schuil- 
maister.” 

“Pooh !” said the marquis with a puff. 
“ I’m too old to go to school.” 

“ I dinna ken the man ’at isna a bairn 
till him, my lord.” 

“ In Greek and Latin ?” 

“P richteousness an’ trouth, my lord 
— in what’s been an’ what is to be.” 

“What! has he the second sight, like 
the piper ?” 

“He has the second sicht, my lord, 
but ane ’at gangs a sicht farther nor my 
auld daddy’s.” 

“ He could tell me, then, what’s going 
to become of me ?” 

“As weel ’s ony man, my lord.” 

“That’s not saying much, I fear.” 

“Maybe mair nor ye think, my lord.” 
18 


“Well, take him my compliments and 
tell him I should like to see him,” said 
the marquis after a minute’s silence. 

“He’ll come direckly, my lord.” 

“Of course he will,” said the marquis. 

“Jist as readily, my lord, as he wad 
gang to ony tramp ’at sent for ’im at sic 
a time,” returned Malcolm, who did not 
relish either the remark or its tone. 

“What do you mean by that? You 
don’t think it such a serious affair, do 
you ?” 

“My lord, ye haena a chance.” 

The marquis was dumb. He had act- 
ually begun once more to buoy himself 
up with earthly hopes. 

Dreading a recall of his commission, 
Malcolm slipped from the room, sent 
Mrs. Courthope to take his place, and 
sped to the schoolmaster. The moment 
Mr. Graham heard the marquis’s mes- 
sage he rose without a word and led the 
way from the cottage. Hardly a sentence 
passed between them as they went, for 
they were on a solemn errand. 

“Mr. Graham’s here, my lord,” said 
Malcolm. 

“Where ? Not in the room ?” return- 
ed the marquis. 

“Waitin’ at the door, my lord.” 

“Bah! You needn’t have been so 
ready. Have you told the sexton to get 
a new spade ? But you may let him in ; 
and leave him alone with me.” 

Mr. Graham walked gently up to the 
bedside. 

“Sit down, sir,” said the marquis 
courteously, pleased with the calm, self- 
possessed, unobtrusive bearing of the 
man. “They tell me I’m dying, Mr. 
Graham.” 

“ I’m sorry it seems to trouble you, my 
lord.” 

“What ! wouldn’t it trouble you, then ?” 

“ I don’t think so, my lord.” 

“Ah ! you’re one of the elect, no 
doubt ?” 

“That’s a thing I never did think 
about, my lord.” 

“What do you think about, then ?” 

“About God.” 

“And when you die you’ll go straight 
to heaven, of course ?” 

“ I don’t know, my lord. That’s an- 


274 


MALCOLM. 


other thing I never trouble my head 
about.” 

‘‘Ah! you’re like me, then, /don’t 
care much about going to heaven. What 
do you care about ?” 

‘‘The will of God. I hope your lord- 
ship will say the same.” 

‘‘ No I won’t ; I want my own will.” 

‘‘Well, that is to be had, my lord.” 

‘‘How ?” 

‘‘ By taking his for yours as the better 
of the two, which it must be every way.” 

‘‘That’s all moonshine.” 

‘‘ It is light, my lord.” 

‘‘Well, I don’t mind confessing, if I 
am to die, I should prefer heaven to the 
other place, but I trust I have no chance 
of either. Do you now honestly believe 
there are two such places ?” 

‘‘ I don’t know, my lord.” 

‘‘You don’t know? And you come 
here to comfort a dying man !” 

‘‘ Your lordship must first tell me what 
you mean by ‘ two such places.’ And 
as to comfort, going by my notions, I 
cannot tell which you would be more or 
less comfortable in ; and that, I presume, 
would be the main point with your lord- 
ship.” 

‘‘And what, pray, sir, would be the 
main point with you ?” 

‘‘To get nearer to God.” 

‘‘Well, I can’t say / want to get nearer 
to God. It’s little he’s ever done for me.” 

‘‘ It’s a good deal he has tried to do for 
you, my lord.” 

‘‘ Well, who interfered ? Who stood in 
•his way, then ?” 

‘‘Yourself, my lord.” 

‘‘ I wasn’t aware of it. When did he 
■ever try to do anything for me and I 
-stood in his way ?” 

‘‘When he gave you one of the love- 
liest of women, my lord,” said Mr. Gra- 
ham with solemn, faltering voice, ‘‘and 
you left her to die in neglect and her 
child to be brought up by strangers.” 

The marquis gave a cry. The unex- 
pected answer had roused the slowly- 
gnawing death and made it bite deeper. 

‘‘What have you to do,” he almost 
screamed, ‘‘with my affairs? It was for 
vie to introduce what I chose of them. 
You presume.” 


‘‘ Pardon me, my lord : you led me to 
what I was bound to say. Shall I leave 
you, my lord ?” 

The marquis made no answer. ‘‘ God 
knows I loved her,” he said after a while 
with a sigh. 

‘‘You loved her, my lord ?” 

‘‘I did, by God I” 

‘‘ Love a woman like that and come to 
this ?” 

‘‘ Come to this ? We must all come to 
this, I fancy, sooner or later. Come to 
what, in the name of Beelzebub ?” 

‘‘ That, having loved a woman like her, 
you are content to lose her. In the name 
of God, have you no desire to see her 
again ?” 

‘‘It would be an awkward meeting,” 
said the marquis. 

His was an old love, alas ! He had 
not been capable of the sort that defies 
change. It had faded from him until it 
seemed one of the things that are not. 
Although his being had once glowed in 
its light, he could now speak of a meet- 
ing as awkward. 

‘‘ Because you wronged her ?” suggest- . 
ed the schoolmaster. 

‘‘ Because they lied to me, by God !” 

‘‘Which they dared not have done had 
you not lied to them first.” 

‘‘Sir!” shouted the marquis, with all 
the voice he had left. — ‘‘O God, have 
mercy I I cannot punish the scoundrel.” 

‘‘The scoundrel is the man who lies, 
my lord.” 

‘‘Were I anywhere else — ” 

‘‘There would be no good in telling 
you the truth, my lord. You showed her 
to the world as a woman over whom you 
had prevailed, and not as the honest wife 
she was. What kind of a lie was that, 
my lord ? Not a white one, surely ?” 

‘‘You are a damned coward to speak 
so to a man who cannot even turn on his 
side to curse you for a base hound. You 
would not dare it but that you know I 
cannot defend myself.” 

‘‘ You are right, my lord : your conduct 
is indefensible.” 

‘‘By Heaven! if I could but get this 
cursed leg under me, I would throw you 
out of the window.” 

‘‘I shall go by the door, my lord. 


MALCOLM. 


275 


While you hold by your sins, your sins 
will hold by you. If you should want 
me again I shall be at your lordship’s 
command.” 

He rose and left the room, but had not 
reached his cottage before Malcolm over- 
took him with a second message from his 
master. He turned at once, saying only, 
” I expected it.” 

” Mr. Graham,” said the marquis, look- 
ing ghastly, “you must have patience with 
a dying man. I was very rude to you, 
but I was in horrible pain.” 

“ Don’t mention it, my lord. It would 
be a poor friendship that gave way for a 
rough word.” 

“ How can you call yourself my friend ?” 

“ I should be your friend, my lord, if 
it were only for your wife’s sake. She 
died loving you. I want to send you to 
her, my lord. You will allow that, as 
a gentleman, you at least owe her an 
apology.” 

“By Jove, you are right, sir! Then 
you really and positively believe in the 
place they call heaven ?” 

“ My lord, I believe that those who open 
their hearts to the truth shall see the light 
on their friends’ faces again, and be able 
to set right what was wrong between 
them.” 

“It’s a week too late to talk of setting 
right.” 

“Go and tell her you are sorry, my 
lord — that will be enough for her.” 

“Ah! but there’s more than her con- 
cerned.” 

“You are right, my lord. There is an- 
other — One who cannot be satisfied that 
the fairest works of his hands, or rather 
the loveliest children of his heart, should 
be treated as you have treated women.” 

“But the Deity you talk of — ” 

“ I beg your pardon, my lord : I talked 
of no deity. I talked of a living Love 
that gave us birth and calls us his chil- 
dren. Your deity I know nothing of.” 

“ Call Him what you please : He won’t 
be put off so easily.” 

“ He won’t be put off, one jot or one 
tittle. He will forgive anything, but He 
will pass nothing. Will your wife for- 
give you ?” 

“She will, when I explain.” 


“ Then why should you think the for- 
giveness of God, which created her for- 
giveness, should be less ?” 

Whether the marquis could grasp the 
reasoning may be doubtful. 

“Do you really suppose God cares 
whether a man comes to good or ill ?” 

“ If He did not. He could not be good 
Himself.” 

“Then you don’t think a good God 
would care to punish poor wretches like 
us ?” 

“Your lordship has not been in the 
habit of regarding himself as a poor 
wretch. And, remember, you can’t call 
a child a poor wretch without insulting 
the father of it.” 

“That’s quite another thing.” 

“ But on the wrong side for your argu- 
ment, seeing the relation between God 
and the poorest creature is infinitely 
closer than that between any father and 
his child.” 

“Then He can’t be so hard on him as 
the parsons say.” 

“ He will give him absolute justice, 
which is the only good thing. He will 
spare nothing to bring his children back 
to Himself, their sole well-being. What 
would you do, my lord, if you saw your 
son strike a woman ?” 

“ Knock him down and horsewhip 
him.” 

It was Mr. Graham who broke the si- 
lence that followed : “Are you satisfied 
with yourself, my lord?” 

“No, by God !” 

“ You would like to be better ?” 

“ I would.” 

“ Then you are of the same mind with 
God.” 

“Yes, but I’m not a fool. It won’t do 
to say I should like to be. I must be it, 
and that’s not so easy. It’s damned 
hard to be good. I would have a fight 
for it, but there’s no time. How is a 
poor devil to get out of such an infernal 
scrape ?” 

“ Keep the commandments.” 

“That’s it, of course; but there’s no 
time, I tell you — no time ; at least, so 
those cursed doctors will keep telling 
me.” 

“If there were but time to draw an- 


276 


MALCOLM. 


other breath, there would be time to 
begin.” 

” How am I to begin ? Which am I 
to begin with ?” 

"There is one commandment which 
includes all the rest.” 

" Which is that ?” 

"To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

"That’s cant.” 

" After thirty years’ trial of it, it is to 
me the essence of wisdom. It has given 
me a peace which makes life or death 
all but indifferent to me, though I would 
choose the latter.” 

“^What am I to believe about Him, 
then ?” 

"You are to believe in Him, not about 
Him.” 

" I don’t understand.” 

"He is our Lord and Master, Elder 
Brother, King, Saviour, the divine Man, 
the human God : to believe in Him is to 
give ourselves up to Him in obedience — 
to search out his will and do it.” 

" But there’s no time, I tell you again,” 
the marquis almost shrieked. 

"And I tell you there is all eternity to 
do it in. Take Him for your master, 
and He will demand nothing of you 
which you are not able to perform. This 
is the open door to bliss. With your last 
breath you can cry to Him, and He will 
hear you as He heard the thief on the 
cross, who cried to Him dying beside 
him : ‘ Lord, remember me when Thou 
comest into Thy kingdom.’ — ‘To-day 
shalt thou be with me in paradise.’ It 
makes my heart swell to think of it, my 
lord. No cross-questioning of the poor 
fellow, no preaching to him. He just 
took him with Him where He was going, 
to make a man of him.” 

"Well, you know something of my 
history : what would you have me do 
now? — at once, I mean. What would 
the Person you are speaking of have 
me do ?” 

"That is not for me to say, my lord.” 

“You could give me a hint.” 

“No. God is telling you Himself. 
For me to presume to tell you would be 
to interfere with Him. What He would 
have a man do He lets him know in his 
mind.” 


“ But what if I had not made up my 
mind before the last came ?” 

"Then I fear He would say to you, 
‘ Depart from me, thou worker of in- 
iquity.’ ” 

“That would be hard when another 
minute might have done it.” 

“ If another minute would have done 
it, you would have had it.” 

A paroxysm of pain followed, during 
which Mr. Graham silently left him. 


CHAPTER LXX. 

END OR BEGINNING? 

When the fit was over and he found 
Mr. Graham was gone, he asked Mal- 
colm, who had resumed his watch, how 
long it would take Lady Florimel to 
come from Edinburgh. 

“Mr. Crathie left wi’ fower horses frae 
the Lossie Airms last nicht, my lord,” 
said Malcolm ; “but the ro’ds are ill, an’ 
she winna be here afore some time the 
morn.” 

The marquis stared aghast : they had 
sent for her without his orders. " What 
shall I do ?” he murmured. " If once I 
look in her eyes, I shall be damned. — 
Malcolm !” 

“ Yes, my lord.” 

" Is there a lawyer in Portlossie ?” 

"Yes, my lord: there’s auld Maister 
Carmichael.” 

“ He won’t do : he was my brother’s 
rascal. Is there no one besides ?” 

“No in Portlossie, my lord. There 
can be nane nearer than Duff Harbor, I 
doobt.” 

"Take the chariot and bring him here 
directly. Tell them to put four horses 
to : Stokes can ride one.” 

"I’ll ride the ither, my lord.” 

"You’ll do nothing of the kind : you’re 
not used to the pole.” 

" I can tak the leader, my lord.” 

“I tell you you’re to do nothing of 
the kind,” cried the marquis angrily. 
"You’re to ride inside, and bring Mr. — 
what’s his name ? — back with you.” 

“Soutar, my lord, gien ye please.” 

“Be off, then. Don’t wait to feed. 
The brutes have been eating all day, and 


MALCOLM. 


277 


they can eat all night. You must have 
him here in an hour.” 

In an hour and a quarter Miss Horn’s 
friend stood by the marquis’s bedside. 
Malcolm was dismissed, but was pres- 
ently summoned again to receive more 
orders. 

Fresh horses were put to the chariot, 
and he had to set out once more — this 
time to fetch a justice of the peace, a 
neighbor laird. The distance was great- 
er than to Duff Harbor ; the roads were 
worse ; the north wind, rising as they 
went, blew against them as they returned, 
increasing to a violent gale ; and it was 
late before they reached Lossie House. 

When Malcolm entered he found the 
marquis alone. 

‘‘Is Morrison here at last?” he cried, 
in a feeble, irritated voice. 

‘‘ Yes, my lord.” 

‘‘What the devil kept you so long? 
The bay mare would have carried me 
there and back in an hour and a half.” 

‘‘ The roads war verra heavy, my lord. 
An’ jist hear till the win’.” 

The marquis listened a moment, and 
a frightened expression grew over his 
thin, pale, anxious face. ‘‘You don’t 
know what depends on it,” he said, ‘‘or 
you would have driven better. Where 
is Mr. Soutar?” 

‘‘I dinna ken, my lord. I’m only jist 
come, an’ I’ve seen naebody.” 

‘‘Go and tell Mrs. Courthope I want 
Soutar. You’ll find her crying some- 
where — the old chicken ! -^ because I 
swore at her. What harm could that do 
the old goose ?” 

‘‘ It’ll be mair for love o’ yer lordship 
than fricht at the sweirin’, my lord.” 

‘‘ You think so ? Why should she care ? 
Go and tell her I’m sorry. But really 
she ought to be used to me by this time. 
Tell her to send Soutar directly.” 

Mr. Soutar was not to be found, the 
fact being that he had gone to see Miss 
Horn. The marquis flew into an awful 
rage, and began to curse and swear 
frightfully. 

‘‘My lord! my lord!” said Malcolm, 
‘‘ for God’s sake, dinna gang on that gait. 
He canna like to hear that kin’ o’ speech ; 
an’ frae ane o’ his ain’ tu !” 


The marquis stopped, aghast at his 
presumption and choking with rage, but 
Malcolm’s eyes filled with tears, and, in- 
stead of breaking out again, his master 
turned his head away and was silent. 

Mr. Soutar came. 

‘‘Fetch Morrison,” said the marquis, 
‘‘and go to bed.” 

The wind howled terribly as Malcolm 
ascended the stairs and half felt his way, 
for he had no candle, through the long 
passages leading to his room. As he en- 
tered the last a huge vague form came 
down upon him like a deeper darkness 
through the dark. Instinctively he step- 
ped aside. It passed noiselessly, with a 
long stride, and not even a rustle of its 
garments — at least Malcolm heard noth 
ing but the roar of the wind. He turn- 
ed and followed it. On and on it went 
down the stair, through a corridor, down 
the great stone turnpike stair, and through 
passage after passage. When it came 
into the more frequented and half-light- 
ed thoroughfares of the house it showed 
as a large figure in a long cloak, indis- 
tinct in outline. 

It turned a corner close by the mar- 
quis’s room. But when Malcolm, close 
at its heels, turned also, he saw nothing 
but a vacant lobby, the doors around 
which were all shut. One after another 
he quickly opened them, all except the 
marquis’s, but nothing was to be seen. 
The conclusion was that it had entered 
the marquis’s room. He must not dis- 
turb the conclave in the sick chamber 
with what might be but ‘‘a false crea- 
tion proceeding from the heat-oppressed 
brain,” and turned back to his own room, 
where he threw himself on his bed and 
fell asleep. 

About twelve Mrs. Courthope called 
him : his master was worse, and wanted 
to see him. 

The midnight was dark and still, for 
the wind had ceased. But a hush and 
a cloud seemed gathering in the stillness 
and darkness, and with them came the 
sense of a solemn celebration, as if the 
gloom were canopy as well as pall — 
black, but bordered and hearted with 
purple and gold ; and the terrible still- 
ness seemed to tremble as with the in- 


278 


MALCOLM. 


audible tones of a great organ at the 
close or commencement of some mighty 
symphony. 

With beating heart he walked softly 
toward the room where, as on an altar, 
lay the vanishing form of his master, like’ 
the fuel in whose dying flame was offered 
the late and ill-nurtured sacrifice of his 
spirit. 

As he went through the last corridor 
leading thither, Mrs. Catanach, type and 
embodiment of the horrors that haunt 
the dignity of death, came walking to- 
ward him like one at home, her great 
round body lighty upborne on her soft 
foot. It was no time to challenge her 
presence, and yielding her the half of the 
narrow way he passed without a greeting. 
She dropped him a courtesy with an up- 
look and again a veiling of her wicked 
eyes. 

The marquis would not have the doc- 
tors come near him, and when Malcolm 
entered there was no one in the room but 
Mrs. Courthope. The shadow had crept 
far along the dial. His face had grown 
ghastly, the skin had sunk to the bones, 
and his eyes stood out as if from much 
staring into the dark. They rested very 
mournfully on Malcolm for a few mo- 
ments, and then closed softly. 

“ Is she come yet T' he murmured, 
opening them wide with sudden stare. 

“ No, my lord.” 

The lids fell again, softly, slowly. 

‘‘Be good to her, Malcolm,” he mur- 
mured. 

‘‘ I wull, my lord,” said Malcolm sol- 
emnly. 

Then the eyes opened and looked at 
him : something grew in them, a light as 
of love, and drew up after it a tear ; but 
the lips said nothing. The eyelids fell 
again, and in a minute more Malcolm 
knew by his breathing that he slept. 

The slow night waned. He woke 
sometimes, but soon dozed off again. 
The two watched by him till the dawn. 
It brought a still gray morning, without 
a breath of wind and warm for the sea- 
son. The marquis appeared a little re- 
vived, but was hardly able to speak. 
Mostly by signs he made Malcolm un- 
derstand that he wanted Mr. Graham, 


but that some one else must go for him. 
Mrs. Courthope went. 

As soon as she was out of the room 
he lifted his hand with effort, laid feeble 
hold on Malcolm’s jacket, and, drawing 
him down, kissed him on the forehead. 
Malcolm burst into tears and sank weep- 
ing by the bedside. 

Mr. Graham, entering a little after, and 
seeing Malcolm on his knees, knelt also 
and broke into a prayer. 

‘‘O blessed Father!” he said, ‘‘who 
knowest this thing, so strange to us, 
which we call death, breathe more life 
into the heart of Thy dying son, that in 
the power of life he may front death. 
O Lord Christ I who diedst Thyself, and 
in Thyself knowest it all, heal this man 
in his sore need — heal him with strength 
to die.” 

A faint Amen came from the marquis. 

‘‘Thou didst send him into the world : 
help him out of it. O God I we belong 
to Thee utterly. We dying men are Thy 
children, O living Father! Thou art 
such a father that Thou takest our sins 
from us and throwest them behind Thy 
back. Thou cleansest our souls as Thy 
Son did wash our feet. We hold our 
hearts up to Thee : make them what they 
must be, O Love ! O Life of men ! O 
Heart of hearts ! Give Thy dying child 
courage and hope and peace — the peace 
of Him who overcame all the terrors of 
humanity, even death itself, and liveth 
for evermore, sitting at Thy right hand, 
our God-brother, blessed to all ages. 
Amen.” 

‘‘Amen !” murmured the marquis, and, 
slowly lifting his hand from the coverlid, 
he laid it on the head of Malcolm, who 
did not know it was the hand of his fa- 
ther blessing him ere he died. 

‘‘ Be good to her,” said the marquis 
once more. 

But Malcolm could not answer for 
weeping, and the marquis was not satis- 
fied. Gathering all his force, he said 
again, ‘‘Be good to her.” 

‘‘I wull, I wull,” burst from Malcolm 
in sobs ; and he wailed aloud. 

The day wore on, and the afternoon 
■ came. Still Lady Florimel had not ar- 
rived, and still the marquis lingered. 


MALCOLM. 


279 


As the gloom of the twilight was deep- 
ening into the early darkness of the win- 
ter night he opened wide his eyes, and 
was evidently listening. Malcolm could 
hear nothing, but the light in his mas- 
ter’s face grew and the strain of his lis- 
tening diminished. At length Malcolm 
became aware of the sound of wheels, 
which came rapidly nearer, till at last the 
carriage swung up to the hall-door. A 
moment, and Lady Florimel was flitting 
across the room. 

“Papa ! papa !’’ she cried, and, throw- 
ing her ann over him, laid her cheek to 
his. 

The marquis could not return her em- 
brace : he could only receive her into 
the depths of his shining, tearful eyes. 

“Flory!” he murmured, “I’m going 
away. I’m going — I’ve got — to make 
an — apology. Malcolm, be good — ’’ 

The sentence remained unfinished. 
The light paled from his countenance : 
he had to carry it with him. He was 
dead. 

Lady Florimel gave a loud cry. Mrs. 
Courthope ran to her assistance. “My 
lady’s in a dead faint,’’ she whispered, 
and left the room to get help. 

Malcolm lifted Lady Florimel in his 
great arms and bore her tenderly to her 
own apartment. There he left her to 
the care of her women and returned to 
the chamber of death. 

Meantime, Mr. Graham and Mr. Soutar 
had come. When Malcolm re-entered 
the schoolmaster took him kindly by the 
arm and said, “ Malcolm, there can be 
neither place nor moment fitter for the 
solemn communication I am commis- 
sioned to make to you : I have, as in the 
presence of your dead father, to inform 
you that you are now marquis of Lossie ; 
and God forbid you should be less worthy 
as marquis than you have been as fisher- 
man !’’ 

Malcolm stood stupefied. For a while 
he seemed to himself to be turning over 
in his mind something he had heard read 
from a book, with a nebulous notion of 
being somehow concerned in it. The 
thought of his father cleared his brain. 
He ran to the dead body, kissed its lips 
as he had once kissed the forehead of 


another, and falling on his knees wept, 
he knew not for what. Presently, how- 
ever, he recovered himself, rose, and, 
rejoining the two men, said, “Gentle- 
men, hoo mony kens this turn o’ things ?’’ 

“ None but Mr. Morrison, Mrs. Cata- 
nach and ourselves — so far as I know,’’ 
answered Mr. Soutar. 

“And Miss Horn,’’ added Mr. Graham. 
“ She first brought out the truth of it, and 
ought to be the first to know of your 
recognition by your father.” 

“ I s’ tell her mysel’,” returned Mal- 
colm. “ But, gentlemen, I beg o’ ye, till 
I ken what I’m aboot an’ gie ye leave, 
dinna open yer moo’ to leevin’ cratur’ 
aboot this. There’s time eneuch for the 
warl’ to ken ’t.” 

“Your lordship commands me,” said 
Mr. Soutar. 

“Yes, Malcolm, until you give me 
leave,” said Mr. Graham. 

“Whaur’s Mr. Morrison?” asked Mal- 
colm. 

“He is still in the house,” said Mr. 
Soutar. 

“Gang till him, sir, an’ gar him prom- 
ise, on the word o’ a gentleman, to baud 
his tongue. I canna bide to hae’t blaret 
a’ gait an’ a’ at ance. For Mistress Cat- 
anach, I s’ deal wi’ her mysel’.” 

The door opened, and, in all the con- 
scious dignity conferred by the immuni- 
ties and prerogatives of her calling, Mrs. 
Catanach walked into the room. 

“A word wi’ ye. Mistress Catanach,” 
said Malcolm. 

“Certainly, my lord,” answered the 
howdy with mingled presumption and 
respect, and followed him to the dining- 
room. “Weel, my lord — ” she began, 
before he had turned from shutting the 
door behind them, in the tone and with 
the air — or rather airs — of having con- 
ferred a great benefit, and expecting its 
recognition. 

“Mistress Catanach,” interrupted Mal- 
colm, turning and facing her, “gien I be 
un’er ony obligation to you, it ’s frae an- 
ither tongue I maun hear ’t. But I hae 
an offer to mak ye : Sae lang as it disna 
coom oot ’at I’m onything better nor a 
fisherman born, ye s’ hae yer twinty 
poun’ i’ the year, peyed ye quarterly. 


28 o 


MALCOLM, 


But the moment fowk says wha I am ye 
touch na a poun’-not’ mair, an’ I coont 
mysel’ free to pursue onything 1 can pruv 
agane ye.” 

Mrs. Catanach attempted a laugh of 
scorn, but her face was gray as putty and 
its muscles declined response. 

'"Ay or no?” said Malcolm. “I winna 
gar ye sweir, for I wad lippen to yer aith 
no a hair.” 

“Ay, my lord,” said the howdy, reas- 
suming at least outward composure, and 
with it her natural brass, for as she spoke 
she held out her open palm. 

“Na, na,” said Malcolm, “nae forhan’ 
payments. Three months o’ tongue- 
haudin’, an’ there’s yer five poun’ ; an’ 
Maister Soutar o’ Duff Harbor ’ill pay ’t 
intill yer ain han’. But brack troth wi’ 
me, an’ ye s’ hear o’ ’t ; for gien ye war 
hangt the warl’ wad be a’ the cleaner. 
Noo quit the hoose, an’ never lat me see 
ye aboot the place again. But afore ye 
gang I gie ye fair warnin’ ’at I mean to 
win at a’ yer byganes.” 

The blood of red wrath was seething 
in Mrs. Catanach’s face : she drew her- 
self up and stood flaming before him, on 
the verge of explosion. 

“Gang frae the hoose,” said Malcolm, 
“ or I’ll set the muckle hun’ to shaw ye 
the gait.” 

Her face turned the color of ashes, and 
with hanging cheeks and scared but not 
the less wicked eyes she hurried from the 
foom. Malcolm watched her out of the 
house, then, following her into the town, 
brought Miss Horn back with him to aid 
in the last earthly services, and hastened 
to Duncan’s cottage. 

But, to his amazement and distress, it 
was forsaken and the hearth cold. In 
his attendance on his father he had not 
seen the piper — he could not remember 
for how many days ; and on inquiry he 
found that, although he had not been 
missed, no one could recall having seen 


him later than three or four days agone. 
The last he could hear of him was that 
about a week before a boy had spied him 
sitting on a rock in the Baillies’ Barn with 
his pipes in his lap. Searching the cot- 
tage, he found that his broadsword and 
dirk, with all his poor finery, were gone. 

That same night Mrs. Catanach also 
disappeared. 

A week after, what was left of Lord 
Lossie was buried. Malcolm followed 
the hearse with the household. Miss 
Horn walked immediately behind hiiti, 
on the arm of the schoolmaster. It was 
a great funeral, with a short road, for the 
body was laid in the church — close to the 
wall, just under the crusader with the 
Norman canopy. 

Lady Florimel wept incessantly for 
three days ; on the fourth she looked out 
on the sea and thought it very dreary ; 
on the fifth she found a certain gratifica- 
tion in hearing herself called the mar- 
chioness ; on the sixth she tried on her 
mourning and was pleased ; on the sev- 
enth she went with the funeral and wept 
again ; on the eighth came Lady Bellair, 
who on the ninth carried her away. 

To Malcolm she had not spoken once. 

Mr. Graham left Portlossie. 

Miss Horn took to her bed for a week. 

Mr. Crathie removed his office to the 
House itself, took upon him the function 
of steward as well as factor, had the 
state-rooms dismantled, and was master 
of the place. 

Malcolm helped Stoat with the horses 
and did odd jobs for Mr. Crathie. From 
his likeness to the old marquis, as be 
was still called, the factor had a favor 
for him, firmly believing the said mar- 
quis to be his father and Mrs. Stewart 
his mother; and hence it came that he 
allowed him a key to the library. 

The story of Malcom’s plans and what 
came of them requires another book. 

615 
















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